Gemini

Mission Profile

Gemini was NASA's second human spaceflight program, a two-person spacecraft launched on Titan II GLV rockets between 1964 and 1966 that served as the bridge between Mercury's pioneering single-person flights and the Apollo Moon program. Across ten crewed missions, Gemini perfected the critical techniques required for Apollo: long-duration spaceflight up to 14 days, orbital rendezvous and docking, spacewalking, and precision reentry. Gemini 4 saw Ed White conduct the first American EVA in June 1965, while Gemini 7 and 6A demonstrated the rendezvous and station-keeping maneuvers essential to Apollo's lunar orbit rendezvous mission architecture. In just two years Gemini transformed NASA from a program of short exploration flights into one confident in its ability to sustain crews in space for the duration of a lunar mission.