Gemini 4 Experiment Debriefing, 1967

Text

A machine read this text from the scan. When the text and the image disagree, the image is right.

Belt 11

6

Anyway, there's a case where Schirra's visual observation has been confirmed by photography, motion picture photography. The explanation I give may or may not be right, I don't know. I haven't had a chance to look at all the other problems. There's also a dust layer in here within this general region too around 20 kilometers which could add some scattering and . . . the situation down by the white light too well, I don't know, it may be very complicated. So here's another situation where an observation, later confirmed by, uh, another set of astronauts doing the job by (physical) means. Uh, Cooper made some very interesting observations. At night he, uh, during moonless nights, he had no trouble seeing clouds looking straight down. And this is interesting because uh, well, we know why he can see the clouds now that he says he could. It is simply that these clouds are being illuminated by the airglow. The air glow is the . . . . . light source is illuminating

down on the clouds and air glow is very transparent in solar radiation and that sort of thing, so when you look down you're getting uh, sort of . . . . . right behind it, you're getting an intensement of, of light here and you see clouds and of course the rest is a factor of two different . . . So he has no trouble seeing clouds. This is interesting because the people now are working on the pole-vault air glow experiment which will be launched . . . . . . this year. Uh, well, we . . . . . . . no, they haven't time to figure how they separate the air glow observations . . . . . . clouds . . . . . . . But again this particular observation brings to light some problems will face people who are working on a major satellite. There's another interesting little by-product. Cooper also had no trouble seeing the earthlem at night. Uh, without moon. This is

6