Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of the Gemini 7 technical debriefing, dated December 23, 1965, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was made from tape recordings of the crew debriefing held December 19 to 21, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. In it, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell go through countdown, powered flight, insertion, station keeping with the booster, systems, experiments and training. The table of contents also lists a section on visual sightings during orbital flight.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: December 19-21, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 7 flight crew debriefing conducted December 19-21, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Lights and flashes are mentioned and there is discussion about having proper illumination for vehicle docking. Borman and Lovell discuss celestial and terrestrial observational anomalies and note sightings of Mercury, meteors, aurora, and lightning. They also discuss not being able to see any stars once the Sun comes up.
“Sea”7 pages
71 by the thrusters . The scanners worked great except at sun rise and sunset. Lovel l They woul d l ose lock••• Borman Sometimes they wouldn't lose lock but, remember, they drove the spacecraft nose down. About 40° pitch down. Lovell The one big thing, which wa.s the question in all our minds, actually b• PP4D•d, Another spacecraft nearby will interrupt the HORIZON SCAN mode. Borman Right. Lovell It does effect the scanner operation, so it i s something you have to take in consideration. Borman That ' s right. When 6 got between us a.nd tha aun, the scan ners were inoperative and lost lock. PLA'Tlt'ORM mode worked excellently when we had it, and we 'll.lled it to align the first two time ■ we had the platform. I think that you can do a finer job, and, you can a lign the platform more closely manually. Thie is becau se the deadband on the PLA.TFOlffl mode i a l arger than you can control manually. But it certainly i a a worthwhile mode and for station keepin&' it is a super ior type of operation. Tra.nal&tion maneuver• at apacecr&ft aepa.ra.tion at SECO + 30--I did not hear the thrusters. I jwst thrwsted. Jim hit the SEP spacecraft. Did you hear the thru.aters?
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.