SpaceX ’s Crewed Launch Continues What NASA’s Gemini Astronauts Started

We’re not sure if Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were watching Sunday when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon lifted off from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral for its first fully operational mission—but the odds are pretty good that they were. Astronauts from past eras of space travel tend to keep up with the doings in the modern one. Either way, the overall audience for the launch was big—NASA’s site carried it live, as did the cable news channels. But of all the people who were watching, it was Lovell and Aldrin whose attention would be the most important, or at least the most poignant. Fifty-four years earlier to the day, in 1966, the pair splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Turks and Caicos after a nearly four day, 59-orbit mission in their Gemini 12 spacecraft. The flight was close to flawless. The crew successfully docked with an uncrewed Agena spacecraft, and Aldrin logged more than five hours outside the Gemini over the course of three separate spacewalks. The tenth and final flight of the Gemini series, it was by any measure a perfect capstone. “In 10 manned Gemini missions since March, 1965,” read the next day’s New York Times, “Gemini astronauts demonstrated their ability to rendezvous and link up with target vehicles, fire a target Agena’s rocket to climb to a record altitude, fly for 14 days without any ill effects and bring their crafts to precise landings.” NASAAstronauts James A. Lovell Jr. (left), comman...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news
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