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NASA approved the two-man / two-vehicle program rechristened Project Gemini (Latin for 'twins'), in reference to the third constellation of the Zodiac with its twin stars Castor and Pollux, on December 7, 1961. Kennedy on May 25, 1961, it became evident to NASA officials that a follow-on to the Mercury program was required to develop certain spaceflight capabilities in support of Apollo. Īfter Apollo was chartered to land men on the Moon by President John F. Scale models were shown in July 1961 at the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation's offices in St. He presented two initial versions of a two-man spacecraft, then designated Mercury Mark II, at a NASA retreat at Wallops Island in March 1961.

Jim Chamberlin, the head of engineering at the Space Task Group (STG), was assigned in February 1961 to start working on a bridge program between Mercury and Apollo. The Apollo program was conceived in early 1960 as a three-man spacecraft to follow Project Mercury. Gus Grissom, acting as Houston capsule communicator when Ed White performed his spacewalk on Gemini 4, is heard on flight recordings pronouncing the spacecraft's call sign 'Jeh-mih-nee 4', and the NASA pronunciation is used in the 2018 film First Man. NASA's public affairs office issued a statement in 1965 declaring 'Jeh-mih-nee' the 'official' pronunciation.

However, staff of the Manned Spacecraft Center, including the astronauts, tended to pronounce the name / ˈ dʒ ɛ m ɪ n i/, rhyming with knee. The constellation for which the project was named is commonly pronounced / ˈ dʒ ɛ m ɪ n aɪ/, the last syllable rhyming with eye. The only AAP project funded was Skylab – which used existing spacecraft and hardware – thereby eliminating the need for Big Gemini. In 1969, Lukas Bingham proposed a ' Big Gemini' that could have been used to shuttle up to 12 astronauts to the planned space stations in the Apollo Applications Project (AAP). NASA's administration did not approve those plans. He believed Gemini spacecraft could fly in lunar operations before Project Apollo, and cost less. Gemini's chief designer, Jim Chamberlin, also made detailed plans for cislunar and lunar landing missions in late 1961. Gemini was robust enough that the United States Air Force planned to use it for the Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program, which was later canceled. During the program, three astronauts died in air crashes during training, including both members of the prime crew for Gemini 9. The astronaut corps that supported Project Gemini included the ' Mercury Seven', ' The New Nine', and ' The Fourteen'. Gemini was the first program to use the newly built Mission Control Center at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for flight control. Their launch vehicle was the Gemini– Titan II, a modified Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).

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This left Apollo free to pursue its prime mission without spending time developing these techniques.Īll Gemini flights were launched from Launch Complex 19 (LC-19) at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida. In doing so, it allowed the United States to catch up and overcome the lead in human spaceflight capability the Soviet Union had obtained in the early years of the Space Race, by demonstrating mission endurance up to just under 14 days, longer than the eight days required for a round trip to the Moon methods of performing extravehicular activity (EVA) without tiring and the orbital maneuvers necessary to achieve rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft. Gemini's objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 19. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Conducted after the first, Project Mercury, and while the Apollo program was still in development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. Project Gemini ( IPA: / ˈ dʒ ɛ m ɪ n i/) was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly.