Day: June 3, 2017

Gemini 9 lifts off on a three-day mission to complete the still unfulfilled docking objectives of the Gemini program. The flight has already seen significant problems, not the least of which is the death of the originally-assigned crew, Elliott See and Charles Bassett, in an accident involving T-38 training jets. The backup crew, Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan, fly Gemini 9 instead, but find that their rendezvous/docking target is still trapped in the aerodynamic shroud that protected it during launch (the shroud would normally have been jettisoned). Furthermore, a spacewalk has been written into the mission plan, requiring Cernan to leave Gemini and go to the rear of the vehicle to unstow and test a “jetpack” (an early prototype of the Manned Maneuvering Unit that will finally see use in the space shuttle program in the 1980s). The spacewalk becomes a two-hour ordeal which leaves Cernan exhausted, thanks to the lack of handholds on the exterior of the Gemini capsule. The flight ends after three days in space.

The second manned Gemini flight, Gemini 4, lifts off with Jim McDivitt and Ed White aboard for a four-day mission. Four hours into the flight, White becomes the first American spacewalker, controlling his movement with a handheld device with small jets allowing him to change his own orientation, though he is tethered to the Gemini capsule at all times. This is the first NASA flight overseen from the new Manned Space Center constructed in Houston, Texas, and the first to be broadcast live worldwide.