August 17, 2015 - Eight Days in a Garbage Can

Eight Days in a Garbage Can   As NASA’s efforts to land humans on the Moon picked up speed in the mid-1960s, several skills had to be mastered: spacewalking, rendezvous, docking, and long-duration spaceflight. On Gemini IV, Ed White demonstrated NASA astronauts had the know-how to function outside the spacecraft. Gemini V, NASA’s third two-astronaut flight, which launched fifty years ago this week, kept the crew in orbit for eight days, the projected length of an Apollo lunar landing mission, and set a new space endurance record. Astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad are seen here just prior to being sealed in their Gemini capsule, which Conrad likened to a “flying garbage can” because of its cramped quarters, which were not much larger than the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Image credit: NASA

Weekly Calendar

August 17-23, 2015

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

 

Monday 17

Moon at apogee

1966: Pioneer 7 launched
1970: Venera 7 launched
2006: Voyager 1 is 100 AU from Earth

Tuesday 18

1868: Total solar eclipse leads to discovery of helium
1877: Asaph Hall discovers Phobos
1960: Discoverer XIV launched, first successful US photo reconnaissance satellite
1993: First DC-X flight
1999: Cassini spacecraft flies by Earth

Wednesday 19

1646: John Flamsteed born
1891: Milton Humason born
1982: Soyuz T-7 launched, Svetlana Savitskaya is second woman in space

Thursday 20

1953: First Redstone rocket launched
1960: Sputnik 5 launched
1975: Viking 1 launched
1977: Voyager 2 launched

Friday 21

1965: Gemini V launched
1972: OAO-3 launched
2002: First Atlas V rocket launched

Saturday 22

Saturn 3° south of Moon
First Qtr Moon 3:31 PM ET

1963: X-15 sets world altitude record for a winged craft (354,000 feet)
1976: Luna 24 returns soil samples from Moon

Sunday 23