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“Buzz” Aldrin during their four-day Gemini XII mission, the final flight of the program, included docking with a target vehicle, performing three spacewalks, and conducting a tethered spacecraft experiment.
At 119 hours and six minutes into the flight, Gemini 5 became the longest crewed space mission, surpassing the mark set by Soviet cosmonaut Valeri I.
Description. Gemini 4 was the second crewed mission of the Gemini series and carried James McDivitt and Edward White on a 4-day, 62-orbit, 98-hr flight from June 3 to June 7, 1965. The mission included the first American spacewalk.
The original Gemini 6 mission, scheduled for launch on October 25, 1965, at 12:41 pm EDT, had a planned mission duration of 46 hours 47 minutes, completing a total of 29 orbits.
Gemini 9 launched on 3 June 1966, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Eugene A. Cernan, USN. Gemini 9 completed 45 orbits over 3 days. Rendezvous with the unmanned Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) was a success; however, docking was not possible due to the condition of the nose cone.
The 3-day mission was designed to achieve a first orbit rendezvous and docking with the Agena target vehicle, to accomplish two ExtraVehicular Activity (EVA) tests, to perform docking practice, docked configuration maneuvers, tethered operations, parking of the Agena target vehicle and demonstrate an automatic reentry.
Gemini 10 Mission
Gemini 10 launched on 18 July 1966, piloted by Lieutenant Commander John W. Young, USN. Gemini 10 completed 43 orbits at an altitude of 412.2 nautical miles and lasted 2 days, 22 hours, and 46 minutes.
Astronauts Jim Lovell and Frank Borman launched on Gemini-VII on Dec. 4, 1965, and eventually spent two weeks in orbit, the longest-duration flight at that time.
Because Grissom's Mercury spacecraft, Liberty Bell 7, had sunk at the end of his 1961 suborbital mission, he unofficially named Gemini 3 for the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" of Broadway musical fame. The crew successfully completed the planned 3-orbit mission in just under 5 hours.
The first rendezvous and docking maneuvers were successfully accomplished. All experiments obtained data except for the Gemini 10 micrometeorite collector, which was lost by floating out of the spacecraft. The landmark contrast measurement experiment was deleted due to lack of fuel.
Gemini 3 was launched from Complex 19 at 9:24 a.m. EST (14:24:00.064 UT) and inserted 5 minutes 54 seconds later (9:29:54 a.m. EST) into a 161.2 x 224.2 km (87 x 121 nautical mile) orbit with a period of 88.3 minutes.
1: The mission duration was 4h 50m, sufficient to achieve all of the mission aims in three orbits; the spacecraft remained in orbit for 3d 23h. First crewed Gemini flight, three orbits. Included first extravehicular activity (EVA) by an American; White's "space walk" was a 22-minute EVA exercise.
At 6 minutes 54 seconds after launch retrorockets were fired and the spacecraft cartwheeled into a reentry attitude. The spacecraft reentered the atmosphere and landed by parachute in the Atlantic Ocean 3419 km southeast of the launch site 18 minutes 16 seconds after launch.
Gemini 8 was launched from Complex 19 at 11:41:02 a.m. EST (16:41:02.389 UT) on 16 March 1966 and inserted into a 159.9 x 271.9 km orbit at 11:47:36 EST.
Gemini 11 used the rocket on its Agena target vehicle to raise its apogee to 853 miles (1,373 km), the highest Earth orbit ever reached by a crewed spacecraft.
Fifty years ago, on December 15, 1965, Gemini VI and VII met for the first rendezvous in space.
On March 23, 1965, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young participated in the first crewed Gemini flight, Gemini III.
The flight plan called for Gemini IX to launch on May 17, 1966, about 90 minutes after the Agena docking target vehicle and confirmation that the target had achieved the correct orbit.
In March 1965, astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young became the first Gemini crew to fly.
Splashdown occurred at 2:21:04 p.m. in the western Atlantic at 24.58 N, 69.95 W, 4.8 km from target point. The crew was picked up by helicopter and brought aboard the U.S.S. Wasp at 2:49 p.m., the spacecraft was picked up at 3:28 p.m. Total mission elapsed time was 94:34:31.
The Gemini 8 capsule returned to Earth safely in a designated emergency splashdown area in the Pacific Ocean. Splashdown occurred just three miles from the recovery ship, and was the only Gemini splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Six and a half hours later, Gemini 8 docked with the GATV, the first docking in space. But 27 minutes after docking, the two spacecraft began to spin out of control. Armstrong undocked Gemini 8, but the spacecraft kept on spinning one revolution every second.