Gemini 9A Recovery

The Gemini 9A spacecraft is recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan's mission, which achieved three different rendezvous techniques but was unable to dock with its target vehicle after its protective shroud failed to separate. Cernan also endured an exhausting two-hour spacewalk, later nicknamed the 'spacewalk from hell,' that revealed how much harder it was to work in the vacuum of space than engineers had anticipated.