Linwood May Fair

Blue text around a red illustration over red text on a white background

This button was most likely celebrating either the first or second space rendezvous missions that took place during NASA's Gemini program.  The first of these two missions, Gemini 7, was a manned spaceflight mission that took place in 1965 and performed the first space rendezvous with the Gemini 6A.  This mission lasted 14 days and was double the length of time that anyone had been in space up to that point. Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A came within 1 foot of each other and would have docked had they been equipped to do so- the Soviet Union had also rendezvoused two ships in space but not come as close to each other as Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A.  Gemini 8 was a manned spaceflight that took place in 1966 and also featured a rendezvous, this time with the docking of Gemini 8 with the Agena target vehicle (an unmanned ship used for practicing maneuvers).  Of note, this mission suffered a critical system failure after the rendezvous which caused an immediate abort of the mission. Pilots Neil Armstrong and David Scott were able to return to Earth safely after 10 hours in orbit.

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