Astronauts seated inside Gemini 3 Poster

Astronauts Virgil I. Grissom (foreground), command pilot; and John W. Young, pilot, are shown inside their Gemini-3 spacecraft during insertion operations at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Insertion into the spacecraft takes place in the white room atop the launch vehicle at Pad 19. Gemini 3 was the first crewed Earth-orbiting spacecraft of the Gemini series. It was piloted by astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John Young, with the primary objective of demonstrating the crewed qualifications of the Gemini spacecraft including evaluation of the two-man Gemini design, the worldwide tracking network, the orbit attitude and manoeuvre system (OAMS), the control of reentry flight path and landing point, spacecraft systems, and spacecraft recovery. Secondary objectives included evaluation of flight crew equipment and effects of low level launch vehicle oscillations (POGO) on the crew, performance of three experimants, and to obtain photographic coverage from orbit.