Project Gemini

Gemini 3 was the first crewed flight of Project Gemini, carrying Gus Grissom and John Young on three orbits and demonstrating, for the first time, that a crewed spacecraft could actively change its own orbit.

Gemini 4 sent James McDivitt and Ed White on a four-day flight remembered above all for White's spacewalk, the first time an American ventured outside a spacecraft in orbit.

Gemini 5 set a new spaceflight endurance record of nearly eight days, proving astronauts could survive a mission as long as a round trip to the Moon, despite a fuel cell problem that threatened to cut the flight short.

Gemini 7 sent Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a grueling fourteen-day flight, the longest crewed spaceflight of its era, while also serving as the target for history's first space rendezvous with Gemini 6A.

Gemini 6A achieved history's first rendezvous between two crewed spacecraft, closing to within a foot of Gemini 7 in orbit after its original Agena docking target was lost in a launch failure.

Gemini 8 achieved the first docking between two spacecraft in orbit, but a stuck thruster sent the combined vehicles into a violent spin minutes later, forcing Neil Armstrong to abort the mission in one of the most dangerous emergencies of the space program.

Gemini 9A attempted three different rendezvous techniques and a docking with a backup target vehicle whose stuck shroud made docking impossible, while Gene Cernan endured one of the most physically punishing spacewalks of the program.

Gemini 10 docked with its own Agena target vehicle and used its engine to reach a new altitude record, then rendezvoused with a second, dormant Agena left over from Gemini 8 while Michael Collins performed two spacewalks.

Gemini 11 docked with its Agena target vehicle in the first orbit, used its engine to set a new altitude record of roughly 850 miles, and conducted the first artificial-gravity experiment by spinning the two spacecraft on a tether.

Gemini 12 closed out Project Gemini with a hand-flown rendezvous after a radar failure and three spacewalks by Buzz Aldrin that finally solved the exhausting EVA workload problem that had plagued earlier missions.