Explorers Club

Gemini was a United States manned space program that bridged the original Mercury program that first got the country into space and the later Apollo missions that landed on the moon. Two astronauts flew aboard each Gemini mission. The program had several goals, all of which were accomplished: learning to rendezvous, or meet up with, another vehicle or object in space; learning to dock, or actually lock up with, another vehicle; learning to work outside the spacecraft in the vacuum of space (known as "extra-vehicular activity," or EVA); and proving that humans could survive in space for the length of time necessary for trips to the moon (up to two weeks total). Ten manned Gemini missions were flown in 1965 and 1966.