On this day in space! Nov. 11, 1966: NASA launches Gemini 12 mission with astronaut icons Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell aboard
The Gemini 12 astronauts James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin lifted off aboard a Titan launch vehicle from the Kennedy Space Center on November 11, 1966, an hour and a half after their Agena target vehicle was orbited by an Atlas rocket.
Key points
- NASA/MSFC NASA The Agena docking target for Gemini 12 launched into orbit just over 90 minutes ahead of Lovell (the mission commander) and Aldrin.
- 11, 1966, the Gemini 12 mission launched an astronaut crew into orbit and set the stage for NASA's Apollo program to land humans on the moon.
- "This approach became so successful, underwater training has become the primary spacewalk training method used by the United State, Russia and China," NASA officials said in a mission overview.
As such, it is the largest indoor body of water in the world, with 6.2 million gallons of water." Astronaut Buzz Aldrin practices spacewalking tasks for Gemini 12 in an underwater mockup of his spacecraft in 1966.
Additional details
- A rookie astronaut (and the first to earn a Ph.D.), Aldrin set a precedent by training for his spacewalk in a neutral buoyancy pool in Maryland to better simulate working in weightlessness.
- It had two astronauts on board: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin.
- 15, landing Lovell and Aldrin just 3 miles from their target near their recovery ship the USS Wasp in the Atlantic Ocean, about 600 miles east of Cape Canaveral.
- "Today, NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston is large enough to include mockups of major sections of the International Space Station.
- Aldrin ended up using a sextant to help Lovell rendevous with the agena after they lost radar lock within 74 miles of the vehicle.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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