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| A 100 foot tether line connects the Agena docking vehicle with the Gemini 12 spacecraft |
Somewhat like the current Space Shuttle is a transition between our earliest space exploration and actually living and working in space, Project Gemini was a transitional project between the initial, pioneering Mercury Program and the actual space travel accomplished by the Apollo Program. And also akin to the Shuttle, its success was absolutely critical to achieving our goal of reaching the Moon.
The primary purpose of the Gemini missions was to learn how to "fly" a space vehicle, to maneuver in orbit, to rendezvous and dock with another vehicle, which were essential to the later Apollo missions. Project Gemini also demonstrated that astronauts could endure conditions of weightlessness for the length of time necessary for a lunar mission.
There were ten Gemini missions spanning a period of 20 months. It was during this period that Mission Control was transferred to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Sixteen new astronauts joined the original seven, and space flight began to become routine. The capsule was larger, almost twice as heavy as the Mercury capsule, but was a much tighter fit for the astronauts, having an interior space only 50% larger than Mercury's. There were many technological improvements, including fuel cells in lieu of batteries, complex maneuvering jets, on-board computers, a modular construction that permitted easy replacement of malfunctioning parts, and ejection seats to replace Mercury's escape rockets. The launch vehicle, the Titan 2 , was far more powerful than the old Atlas-D that had launched Mercury into orbit, and it also served to launch the "Agena" upper stage that contained the docking mechanisms used to train the astronauts for Apollo.
By the time of Gemini's final flight, Lunar Orbiter 2 was already mapping out Apollo landing sites. Altogether there were ten Gemini flights spanning between March 1965 to November 1966. Duration of the flights varied from 4 hours and 53 minutes to 330 hours and 35 minutes.
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| A 100 foot tether line connects the Agena docking vehicle with the Gemini 12 spacecraft |
For more details on Project Gemini visit www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/history/gemini/gemini.htm