Underappreciated at the time and even still today, Gemini was the necessary link between learning to get into orbit and figuring out how to fly to the Moon ... The mission plan was for the ...

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – On January 19, 1965, NASA’s Gemini II spacecraft launched from Cape Kennedy (now Kennedy Space Center) in Florida. This suborbital flight marked the final test before the ...

But the closest NASA came to losing astronauts during the race to the Moon was a little-known incident in 1966, during the Gemini missions. Specifically, Gemini 8, whose 50th anniversary has just ...

This timeline highlights the manned and unmanned tests of the Gemini Program ... docking procedures in orbit around the Earth and the moon and to seamlessly re-enter and land.

Gemini 8 was launched on March 16, 1966, and Armstrong performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space. As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar landing mission, ...