NEXT GEMINI IS LAST

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31188, 12 October 1966, Page 17

NEXT GEMINI IS LAST

dV.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) CAPE KENNEDY, October 10. The National Aeronautics Space Administration announced today that America’s Gemini XII space probe would be launched on a four-day flight on November 9.

It will be the final mission

in the two-man Project Gemini series and is expected to be followed in early December by the first manned launch of the three-seater Apollo spaceship.

Ths astronauts, James Lovell, a Navy captain, and an Air Force major, Edwin Aldrin, will attempt to rendezvous with an Agena target rocket on Gemini’s third swing around earth, and then will use the Agena’s powerful engine to propel them 460 miles into space. The flight plan also calls for Aldrin to perform two extra activities outside the spacecraft. One will be a two-hour and 15-minute “space stand” in the open hatch of Gemini XII to conduct a series of photographic experiments. The second will be a one-hour and 45minute “space walk” to attempt to find out just what man can and cannot do outI side his spacecraft. I N.A.S.A. had previously dropped plans to have Aldrin !use a sophisticated back-pack

.manoeuvering unit to move ■about in space. Instead, he will tackle a space-walk routine that includes a series of relatively simple work tasks near the nose of Gemini XII and also in its rear section. N.A.S.A. said officials thought the new space-walk plans would “contribute more to the understanding of man’s capabilities outside the space craft than a test of the A.M.U. (astronaut manoeuvering unit).”

After the Gemini XI astronaut, Richard Gordon, was forced to cut short a space walk last month because of near exhaustion working in the weightless void of space

outside his space craft, project officials decided much more was needed to be known about man’s ability to work in space.

Gemini XII is scheduled to be launched 98 minutes after the launching of the Agena target. The astronauts are scheduled to land in the western Atlantic Ocean after an automatic re-entry on November 13.

The first manned Apollo flight is unofficially scheduled for launch on a 14-day flight on December 5. Its astronauts will be Virgil Grisson, one of the Mercury pilots, Edward White, the first United States space-walker, and a newcomer, Roger Chaffee.