In this episode of the Terranauts podcast, NASA suffers a major failure in the Gemini program. NASA’s response would be critical to getting the program back on track.
It was the 25th of October, 1965. And Houston had a problem. And by that I mean that Gene Kranz and the flight control team in the mission control centre of the manned spaceflight center in the Houston had a problem, Gemini VI had failed.
For the first time in over 4 years NASA had launched a human space flight mission that had ended in failure. True, the humans in the mission had not actually gotten off the launch pad since the mission had ended when the unmanned Gemini Agena Target Vehicle had destroyed itself on the way to orbit. Still Gemini VI was a failed mission.
How NASA responded to that failure would say a lot about how far it had come in four years – and how it was preparing for its much longer journey to the surface of the Moon and back.
Listen in.