The general objectives of the program included: long duration flights testing the ability to maneuver a spacecraft and to achieve rendezvous and docking of two vehicles in Earth orbit training of both flight and ground crews conducting experiments in space extravehicular operations (standup sessions and spacewalks) active control of reentry to achieve a precise landing and onboard orbital navigation. Designed as a bridge between the Mercury and Apollo programs, the Gemini program primarily tested equipment and mission procedures and trained astronauts and ground crews for future Apollo missions. The Gemini program consisted of a total of 19 launches, 2 initial uncrewed tests, 7 target vehicles, and 10 crewed missions, each of which carried two astronauts to Earth orbit. Preparing for the Moon: the Gemini missions were essential for testing spacecraft for travel beyond Earth’s orbit. When the movie frames were stitched together, the panoramas taken in the late 1940s covered a million square miles or more at a single glance. The V-2 cameras reached more than five times that altitude and clearly showed the planet set against the blackness of space. He designed and fabricated the first research nose shell to replace of the V-2 warhead and began placing cameras in the nose shell.īefore the Small Steps Program began in 1946 using V-2 rockets to take images from space, the highest pictures ever taken of the Earth's surface were from the Explorer II balloon, which ascended 13.7 miles in 1935, high enough to discern the curvature of the Earth. Mengel conducted upper atmosphere experiments by launching the rockets into near-earth orbit. Mengel, a NASA pioneer who later oversaw the Vanguard Program, began experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets. Just the year before in 1946, scientists like John T. On March 7, 1947, not long after the end of World War II and years before Sputnik ushered in the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful in these grainy black-and-white-photos - the first pictures of Earth as seen from altitude greater than 100 miles in space. The first photograph taken from 100 miles up in space onboard a V2 rocket, March 1947.
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