50 years ago, on the way to the Moon…
The final on-orbit remnant of the Gemini Program reentered the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific on September 15, 1967, after a year and a half in space. The Gemini Agena Target Vehicle-8 (GATV-8) was launched on March 16, 1966, atop an Atlas rocket and served as the target for the first docking in space, with Gemini 8 and its crew of Neil Armstrong and David Scott. Perfecting rendezvous and docking techniques were critical steps on the way to the Moon, since they were required to get astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The target vehicle was revisited in July 1966 by the Gemini 10 crew of John Young and Michael Collins who made a passive rendezvous with the now “dead” target, after they had earlier docked with their own GATV-10.