Gemini 9
| Mission emblem | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|||
| Mission dates | |||
| Mission: | Gemini 9 | ||
| COSPAR-ID : | 1966-047A | ||
| Spacecraft: | Gemini 9 | ||
| Launcher: | Titan II Gemini 62-12564 | ||
| Crew: | 2 | ||
| Begin: | June 3, 1966, 13:39:33 UTC JD : 2439280.0691319 |
||
| Starting place: | LC-19 , Cape Canaveral | ||
| Landing: | June 6, 1966, 14:00:23 UTC JD : 2439283.0835995 |
||
| Landing place: | Atlantic , 27 ° 52'N / 75 ° 00'W | ||
| Flight duration: | 3d 0h 20 m 50s | ||
| Earth orbits: | 45 | ||
| Recovery ship: | USS Wasp | ||
| Orbit inclination : | 28.91 ° | ||
| Apogee : | 266.9 km | ||
| Perigee : | 158.8 km | ||
| Covered track: | 5,242,682 km | ||
| Team photo | |||
 from left Tom Stafford and Eugene Cernan |
|||
| ◄ Before / After ► | |||
|
|||
Gemini 9 (GT-9, also Gemini 9A ) was a manned space flight as part of the US Gemini program .
Death of the original team
On November 8, 1965, NASA announced the crew for the Gemini 9 mission. Since the flight of Gemini 6 had been postponed, four Gemini teams (flights 6 to 9) were training at the same time for the first time.
Elliot See was chosen as the commander . He belonged to the second group of astronauts and was previously on the backup team of Gemini 5 . Charles Bassett from the third group of astronauts was nominated as a pilot . The replacement crew consisted of Tom Stafford , whose first space flight with Gemini 6 was to take place in December 1965, and Eugene Cernan , who had no space experience. As part of their training program, the four astronauts flew in two two-seat jets to Saint Louis on February 28, 1966 , where they were supposed to train on the Gemini simulator from the McDonnell company . See canceled the landing due to poor visibility, but brushed against a building. See and Bassett did not survive the crash. An investigative committee of seven, led by Alan Shepard , found no cause other than pilot error.
After Theodore Freeman's death , this marked the second time American astronauts were killed in a plane crash while in training.
preparation
For the first time in the US space program, the replacement crew had to take over a spacecraft. The flight preparations were not delayed as a result. Thus, Stafford became the first astronaut to come on a second Gemini mission.
The previous team from Gemini 10 became the new replacement team : Jim Lovell , who had just completed the record flight of Gemini 7 , and Edwin Aldrin .
These two acted as liaison spokespeople ( Capcom ) along with Neil Armstrong and Richard Gordon . Neil Armstrong was previously in command of Gemini 8 , Gordon was scheduled for Gemini 11 .
For Gemini 9, as before for Gemini 8, it was planned that the spaceship should dock with a previously launched Agena stage. A space exit from Cernan was also planned.
After the flight of Gemini 8 had to be aborted in March due to a jammed control nozzle, the spaceship Gemini 9 was carefully examined. Some problems were fixed and new security measures were introduced.
The Agena target satellite was launched on May 17, 1966 , but after a few minutes the flight control lost control and the missile fell into the sea. Apparently the Atlas missile had not worked properly, as it did with Gemini 6.
The mission was renamed Gemini-9A and a new launch of a simplified ATDA ( Augmented Target Docking Adapter ) target satellite was scheduled for June 1st without its own Agena stage. The satellite was able to be put into orbit, but telemetry data indicated problems with the casing of the docking adapter.
Stafford and Cernan were ready to start in their spaceship , but shortly before the ignition, the start had to be aborted because the required data from the ground station could not be sent to the spaceship. For Stafford this was the fourth canceled start.
Flight history
.jpg)
Two days later, on June 3, 1966, Gemini 9 took off. A rendezvous with the ATDA was held after four hours , but the lining of the nose cone was actually only partially detached. The astronaut Stafford described the sight with the words: "It looks like an angry alligator out here rotating around". It turned out that during the final assembly, due to insufficient documentation, some safety straps had been attached incorrectly. A manual severing by Cernan during his space walk, as suggested by Edwin Aldrin, was discarded as too dangerous, so that a coupling had to be dispensed with. Even so, Gemini 9 conducted three different types of rendezvous, which fulfilled the primary mission objectives.
On the third day, Cernan left the spaceship as the third person and moved freely in space. Moving in weightlessness turned out to be extremely difficult. The handles and Velcro straps mounted on the spaceship were not sufficient, and Cernan did not have a free hand for much of the work. After an hour his visor began to fog up, which delayed work even more. After about two hours, Cernan returned to the spaceship without having completed all of the tasks, in particular he had not gotten around to testing the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit with its own oxygen supply and radio unit. After all, Cernan had set a new record with 128 minutes, he felt the spacewalk as a "space walk through hell" ( Eugene Cernan ).
After three days, Gemini 9 fired the retarded missiles for re-entry . The splashdown took place in the Atlantic, only 0.7 km from the target point, which had the pleasant side effect that the capsule could be photographed during the splashdown, the only manned Gemini mission on which this was possible. The impact was relatively hard because the landing capsule was also hit from the side by a wave. The astronauts noticed water in the interior, but it was not a leak, but a broken water pipe in the capsule. Stafford and Cernan were hoisted aboard the USS Wasp with the capsule .
Importance within the Gemini program
Gemini 9 had carried out several successful rendezvous and many scientific experiments, but in the end it was mainly the failures that were remembered: the unsuccessful docking and the aborted spacecraft mission. Both tasks were to be tackled again by Gemini 10 just six weeks later.
See also
Web links
- Gemini 9A in the NSSDCA Master Catalog (English)
- NASA: Gemini-9A mission summary (English)
- Radio communication protocols (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eugene Cernan: The Last Man On The Moon . 2000, ISBN 0-312-26351-1 , pp. 123 .
