Word: geminis
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Though the rendezvous and docking seemed almost routine, Houston controllers were shocked when Young reported that Gemini had only 380 lbs. of fuel left, about 36% of its original supply. Somehow the catch-up maneuvers during the last 25 minutes before rendezvous had consumed almost 260 lbs. more than expected...
Ominous though it was, Gemini's sudden fuel shortage provided Agena with an added opportunity to demonstrate that one spacecraft can use another's propulsion and control systems. On orders from Houston, the astronauts shut down Gemini's thrusters; for the remainder of the coupled flight, they used only Agena's power for both attitude and major orbital maneuvers, drawing on Agena's 3,348 lbs. of remaining propellant. One brief burst from Agena's big, 16,000-lb.-thrust engine added 280 m.p.h. to Gemini-Agena's velocity. "When that baby lights...
Atlantic Anomaly. Boosted by the Agena's thrust, the Gemini-Agena combination reached a maximum height of 476 miles, carrying Astronauts Young and Collins to the highest altitude ever reached by man-well above the 354-mile record set by Russian Cosmonauts Aleksei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev during the 1965 flight of Voskhod II. In its lofty elliptical orbit, Gemini-Agena passed several times through the "South Atlantic Anomaly," an area where the lower portion of the Van Allen radiation belt dips to within a few hundred miles of the earth. Though the astronauts were exposed to radiation...
...high, far-flung orbit also placed the coupled craft in position to begin a rendezvous with a second target: Agena 8, lifeless but still riding on a nearly circular orbit after its role in the aborted Gemini 8 mission four months earlier. At first, last week's Gemini-Agena was 3,220 miles ahead of Agena 8; during the next several hours, the dead target ship-revolving around the earth every 99 minutes, compared to 101 minutes for Gemini-Agena-slowly passed the sleeping astronauts...
...large thruster for eleven seconds. Again the astronauts felt the kick of the big engine. "It may be only one g.," said Young, "but it's the biggest one g. we ever saw." Because the thrust was against the direction of flight, it had a braking effect, reducing Gemini-Agena's velocity and cutting the apogee of its orbit from 476 to 245 miles. A final maneuver placed the astronauts in a 240-mile circular orbit slightly inside the path of Agena 8, now 1,245 miles ahead...