NASA awarded the two-seat Gemini spacecraft contract to McDonnell in St. Louis and ordered a modified Titan II missile built by Martin Marietta in Baltimore. NASA’s historical account shows workers examining a spacecraft mockup and testing the rocket at the companies’ facilities. [S1]

At Cape Canaveral, workers prepared the rocket stages for a compatibility test involving 30-second sequential static firings on January 21, 1964. They later stacked the stages vertically and mounted the spacecraft; engineers ran a simulated countdown and flight test before launch. Instruments took the place of the two crew ejection seats to record conditions during the mission. [S1]

Flight director Christopher Kraft led controllers monitoring Gemini 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The planned mission ended after three orbits, about four hours and 50 minutes after launch; a worldwide network continued tracking the spacecraft until its April 12 reentry over the southern Atlantic Ocean. [S1]

Source documents

  1. 60 Years Ago: Gemini 1 Flies a Successful Uncrewed Test Flighthttps://www.nasa.gov/history/60-years-ago-gemini-1-flies-a-successful-uncrewed-test-flight/