TONY RIGGS: Again, the spacecraft floated almost silently above the Earth. Communications were few. Cooper and Conrad could not do any of the planned experiments. But each day, they set another record for surviving in space.
Eight days after their launch, Cooper and Conrad fired the control rockets and re-entered the atmosphere. They had circled the Earth one hundred twenty times. They had seen one hundred twenty sunrises and sunsets. They had traveled more than five million kilometers. They had proved that people could live and work in space for the time it would take to get to the moon and back.
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HARRY MONROE: Now, it was time for Gemini Six to make its mark in history. Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford were the astronauts. Schirra had been the pilot on an almost perfect Mercury flight three years before. Stafford was from the second group of American astronauts.
They were to make the first effort at a space chase. The two men would chase another object orbiting Earth, a satellite. They would try to move their spacecraft as close as possible to the satellite. This move had to be successful before any moon landing could be attempted.
But things did not go as planned. The satellite that Schirra and Stafford were supposed to chase apparently exploded after it was launched. NASA postponed the flight of Gemini Six.
TONY RIGGS: Space agency officials had to find the reason for the failure of the target satellite. That would take valuable time. So, they decided to launch the next flight, Gemini Seven, instead of waiting.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25