The Idea of Rendezvous

Late in 1961, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced its plans for a new manned spaceflight project aimed at proving the techniques of orbital rendezvous.1 The first U.S. manned program, Project Mercury, was then on the eve of its attempt to put a man in orbit; and Project Apollo, intended to land Americans on the Moon within the decade, was already under way.2 During 1961, NASA planners had come to see the vital role that orbital rendezvous might play in a lunar mission.3 They expected the new project, soon dubbed Gemini, to prove that a piloted spacecraft and an unmanned target, separately launched from the Earth's surface, could meet in space-matching their orbits so that they were virtually at rest with respect to each other and no significant distance remained between them.4

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