Borman Calls a 'Bogey' From Orbit

Brief

This asset is an air-to-ground audio recording captured during NASA's Gemini 7 mission and released via war.gov as part of the UAP disclosure program. On December 5, 1965, Commander Frank Borman reported an unidentified object to mission control, identifying it with the aviation term 'bogey'; crew member Jim Lovell added corroborating comments. The recording preserves two concurrent audio sources: the crew communications channel and the NASA Public Affairs feed with live commentary. No transcript or extracted text accompanies the release, so direct quotation from the audio is not possible from the materials provided.

Metadata

Agency

NASA

Release

5/8/26

Incident

12/5/65

Location

Low Earth Orbit

Type

VIDEO • .mp4

Programs

Gemini 7

Tags

bogey, Low Earth Orbit, 1965, Gemini 7, audio recording, crewed spaceflight, mission control communication

Key points

• Frank Borman, commander of Gemini 7, reported an unidentified object to NASA Houston mission control, using the term 'bogey' to characterize it.
• Jim Lovell, the second crew member aboard Gemini 7, contributed additional comments about the sighting beyond Borman's initial report.
• The sighting occurred in low Earth orbit on December 5, 1965 — the mission's first full day in space following a December 4 launch.
• The recording captures two distinct audio channels: the air-to-ground crew communications and the NASA Public Affairs commentary feed.
• This document is audio-only with no accompanying transcription; no page text is extractable from the released asset.

Most interesting

• Borman's use of 'bogey' — a military aviation designation for an unidentified aircraft — represents an astronaut applying fighter-pilot identification vocabulary to a sighting in orbital space.
• Gemini 7 launched December 4, 1965; the UAP sighting occurred the following day, meaning the crew had been in orbit fewer than 24 hours when the event was reported.
• Both witnesses went on to historic subsequent missions: Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first crewed orbit of the Moon; Lovell commanded Apollo 13.
• The inclusion of the NASA Public Affairs commentary feed alongside the crew channel means any institutional framing or on-air characterization of the event at the time of broadcast is also captured in the recording.
• Gemini 7 was a 14-day endurance mission — the longest human spaceflight to that point in history — making the crew's observational acuity a documented baseline of interest to analysts.