Eight Days or Bust: 5 Fun Facts About Gemini 5

Aeryn Avilla
Aug 20
10 min read

August 21, 2025 is the 60th anniversary of Gemini 5, the third manned flight of the Gemini program. The mission's command pilot was Gordon Cooper, the sixth American in space and veteran of Mercury-Atlas 9. The pilot was rookie Pete Conrad, future Apollo moonwalker. The crew's backup astronauts were Neil Armstrong and Elliot See. Let's look at five interesting facts about Gemini 5!

Gemini 5 astronauts Pete Conrad. and Gordon Cooper — Pilot Pete Conrad and command pilot Gordon Cooper at LC-19, August 16, 1965 *(NASA ID: S65-46990)*

1. Patch Me Through

According to Leap of Faith by Gordon Cooper and Bruce Henderson, Cooper and Conrad wanted to name their capsule Lady Bird after the First Lady of the United States Lady Bird Johnson. However, NASA was very reluctant to allow astronauts to name their spacecraft after Gemini 3's Molly Brown and administrator James Webb turned down this request.

While the crews of Gemini 3 and Gemini 4 designed their own mission insignia that embellished silver medallions they carried into space, Gemini 5 was the first mission to feature embroidered patches. Cooper and Conrad, an Air Force test pilot and a Navy test pilot respectively, realized they had never been in a military or government organization without a patch symbolizing their mission or vehicle. Cooper's Mercury capsule, as well as all previous Mercury capsules, had simple but unique insignia painted on their exterior panels similar to nose art on aircraft.

Gemini 5 prime and backup crews — Backup pilot Elliot See, backup command pilot Neil Armstrong, prime pilot Pete Conrad, and prime command pilot Gordon Cooper *(NASA)*

The pair chose the image of a Conestoga wagon, a horse-drawn covered wagon used by American settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries, to represent the pioneering nature of Gemini 5. The mission's primary objective was orbiting the Earth for eight days, so the slogan "8 Days or Bust" was included in red letters across the wagon. However, NASA thought the phrase would reflect poorly on the program if the mission did not last its full duration, and a piece of cloth was sewn over it prior to launch. Legend has it the astronauts asked a local patch company to produce the patches and the two sewed them onto their spacesuits themselves. Cooper and Conrad waited until their pre-launch dinner party to tell NASA Administrator James Webb about the patches and he was quite unhappy. After they were able to convince him the insignia represented everyone working on the program, not just the two of them, he reluctantly allowed the patches to fly. After Gemini 5's success, Webb directed all future space crews to wear their own patch, internally referred to as a "Cooper patch", thus beginning one of the most cherished traditions in the space industry.

Gemini 5 patch — An original Cooper patch— if you look closely, you can see the red text on the center of the wagon covered up by a small piece of fabric *(NASA ID: S66-59530)*

Gemini 5 lifts off from Cape Canaveral — Gemini 5 liftoff *(NASA ID: S65-28694)*

2. Eight Days A Week

Gemini 5 launched from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy on Friday, August 21, 1965 at 9:59:59 AM EDT. Rookie Buzz Aldrin and Gemini 4 command pilot Jim McDivitt served as Houston CAPCOMs and Gemini 3 command pilot Gus Grissom served as Cape Canaveral CAPCOM. The top half of Gemini 5's Titan II's first stage was retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean by USS Du Pont and is now on display at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

As mentioned, Gemini 5's primary mission objective was to spend eight days in orbit— the length of time it would take to fly to the moon, land on it, and return to Earth. This doubled the American long duration record of four days set by Gemini 4 in June and broke the international record of one hour shy of five days set by Vostok 5 in June 1963.

The mission was not without its problems. The spacecraft's fuel cells were powered off for a period and after being powered back on, began producing waste water too acidic for drinking. The Gemini spacecraft, due to the length of time it needed to operate in space, was the first spacecraft to use fuel cells to provide electrical power, and a byproduct of generating electricity was water. On flight day 5, one of the orbit attitude and maneuvering system (OAMS) thruster blocks, the Gemini spacecraft's reaction control system, malfunctioned repeatedly and was shut off for good.

Sixteen of the seventeen planned medical, photography, and scientific experiments were carried out, including photography of celestial objects, cloud-top spectrometry, photography of the Zagros Mountains in the Middle East, and eyesight tests.

Cape Canaveral seen from orbit by Gemini 5 — Cape Kennedy from orbit *(NASA ID: S65-45753)*

3. Have a Little Faith

Gemini 5 marked the first time a person completed two orbital spaceflights. On May 15, 1963, Gordon Cooper became the sixth American and tenth person in space onboard the 34-hour long Mercury-Atlas 9 mission, the final mission of the Mercury program. Cooper and his spacecraft Faith 7 completed 22 orbits and became the first American to spend at least a full day in space. Due to technical problems with the spacecraft towards the end of the mission, Cooper manually initiated retrofire, a typically automatic process. As of August 2025, Gordon Cooper is the last American to perform a solo spaceflight.

While Cooper was the first person to fly two orbital missions, Gus Grissom, sole pilot of the suborbital Mercury-Redstone 4 and command pilot of Gemini 3, was the first person to launch into space twice. Captain Joseph Walker surpassed the Kármán line, the internationally accepted boundary of space at 62 miles (100 km), on Flights 90 and 91 of the North American X-15 rocket-powered aircraft in 1963, making him the first human to enter space twice. Of the seven Mercury astronauts, four flew in space twice (Alan Shepard, Grissom, John Glenn, and Cooper) and one flew three times (Wally Schirra).

Gordon Cooper in his Mercury spacesuit (NASA ID: 8772556) | Mercury-Atlas 9 on the launch pad (NASA ID: S63-07608)

4. Phantom Rendezvous

Another primary objective of Gemini 5 was to practice rendezvous maneuvers, which had yet to be achieved by either the US or USSR. Just over two hours into the mission, the pair ejected the Rendezvous Evaluation Pod and watched it drift away from their capsule, but while out of radio contact with Earth, they found the pressure in one of the Gemini spacecraft's fuel cells had dropped by more than 90%— from 850 to 65 pounds per square inch (5,860 to 450 Kilopascal). While this was above the 22.2 psi (153 kPa) minimum for operating the spacecraft, Cooper shut down the fuel cells and relied on battery power for the time being. Unfortunately, with the fuel cells temporarily out of service, the crew would not be able to rendezvous with the REP and if they were to remain out of service, the crew would have to return to Earth the next day. Gemini 5 was the first space mission to rely on fuel cells for electrical power and water.

The fuel cells were slowly powered back on and on mission day 3, Cooper and Conrad performed a sort of "phantom" rendezvous during which they maneuvered to a given point in orbit as if they were rendezvousing with a spacecraft. They used the OAMS to adjust their apogee (farthest point from Earth), adjust their phase (moving to a different location in the same orbit), and change their orbital inclination. This was the first time a precision maneuver was performed on a spaceflight. The first space rendezvous would be performed for real a few months later between Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A.

Rendezvous Evaluation Pod seen from Gemini 5 *(NASA ID: S65-28653)*

Rendezvous and docking between two manned space vehicles was an exceptionally crucial component of future missions to the moon: First, the Apollo command/service module would need to extract the Lunar Module from the S-IVB upper stage of the Saturn V. This was called the transposition, docking, and extraction maneuver. Second, and more importantly, the two spacecraft would need to rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit after the LM's ascent stage departed the lunar surface to return to Earth.

Gemini 5's Titan II first stage retrieval — Retrieving Gemini 5's Titan II first stage from the Atlantic Ocean *(NASA)*

5. Anchors Aweigh

On August 29, after 7 days, 22 hours, and 55 minutes in space, Gemini 5 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. Gemini 5 was the last of three NASA spacecraft to be recovered by the USS Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain was an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned in June 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in Europe (May) and shortly before the end of the war in the Pacific (September). Named after the War of 1812 Battle of Lake Champlain, she brought troops home from Europe during Operation Magic Carpet. The ship was modernized and served in the Korean War, participated in NATO operations in the Mediterranean, and participated in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lake Champlain's first stint as a spacecraft recovery vessel was in May 1961 when she and her crew retrieved Alan Shepard and his Freedom 7 capsule about 300 miles (480 km) downrange from Cape Canaveral. In January 1965, the carrier retrieved the unmanned Gemini 2 capsule, which in November 1966 would become the first and only twice-flown American capsule until 2021 [1]. Lake Champlain's last major assignment was retrieving Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad and their Gemini 5 capsule from the Atlantic Ocean in August 1965. The ship was decommissioned in May 1966 and sold for scrap in April 1972. The capsule is now on display at at Space Center Houston in Houston, Texas.

Pete Conrad and Gordon Cooper on the deck of the USS Lake Champlain — Conrad and Cooper on the deck of *Lake Champlain (NASA ID: S65-46645)*

Post-Flight

Cooper and Conrad were flown to the Kennedy Space Center for debriefings and medical check-ups the day after splashdown and arrived back home to Houston on September 2. On September 14, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal to the two astronauts and Dr. Charles Berry, the astronauts' chief physician. From September 15 to September 28, Cooper and Conrad and their wives traveled to six countries on a goodwill tour, visiting Greece, Turkey, Ethiopia, the Malagasy Republic (now Madagascar), Kenya, and Nigeria, also stopping in the Canary Islands before returning to Texas. While attending the International Astronautical Congress in Athens, Greece, Cooper and Conrad met with Voskhod 2 cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov, the latter of whom performed the first EVA in March 1965.

Astronauts Cooper and Conrad with cosmonauts Leonov and Belyayev — Cosmonaut Leonov, astronauts Conrad and Cooper, and cosmonaut Belyayev in Athens *(NASA)*

Gordon Cooper served as backup command pilot of Gemini 12, the final Gemini mission, in late 1966 and as backup commander of Apollo 10 in May 1969. The usual Apollo crew rotation placed him in the commander's seat for Apollo 13, but Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton replaced Cooper with Alan Shepard, who had recently returned to active flight status, due to the former's lax attitude towards training. In 1968, Cooper and Charles Buckley, the NASA chief of security at the Kennedy Space Center, entered the 24 Hours of Daytona (now called the Rolex 24 at Daytona), a 24-hour race held at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida (shoutout to my old home), but was ordered by NASA to withdraw due to the dangers of motorsports. Cooper retired from both NASA and the Air Force in July 1970 with the rank of colonel and worked as a technical consultant for numerous companies, including the Walt Disney Company, and was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1981 and the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. He passed away on October 4, 2004, at his home in Ventura, California, from heart failure at the age of 77. A portion of his ashes were launched into space twice, first in April 2007 onboard the sub-orbital UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL sounding rocket, and second in May 2012 onboard the SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 2 [2].

Conrad and Cooper cut a cake onboard the Lake Champlain — Conrad and Cooper cut a commemorative cake onboard *Lake Champlain (NASA)*

Pete Conrad's space career, on the other hand, was just getting started. He served as backup command pilot of Gemini 8 and command pilot of Gemini 11 in 1966. He and pilot Richard Gordon set a human space apogee record of 853 miles (1,373 km) that remained unbroken for nearly 60 years (not counting the Apollo missions that broke free from Earth's orbit) [3]. Conrad was backup commander of Apollo 9 in spring 1969 and flew to the moon as commander of Apollo 12 that November, becoming the third and shortest (at around 5'6" or 1.68 m) person to walk on the moon. Conrad's final trip into space was as commander of Skylab 2, the first crew to visit America's first space station, Skylab. He retired from both the Navy and NASA in 1973 with the rank of captain and in his eleven years as an astronaut, set two human space records, walked on the moon, and spent four weeks on the nation's first space station. Conrad joined McDonnell Douglas in 1976 and was a consultant on the Delta Clipper Experimental reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle in the 1990s. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982 and the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993. Pete Conrad passed away on July 8, 1999 at the age of 69 from internal injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

Despite its flaws, Gemini 5 was a success and propelled the country closer to landing men on the moon, overtaking the stagnating Soviet manned space effort. The next mission would aim to nearly double the American manned space duration record again– this time to 14 days.

Conrad and Cooper on the deck of Lake Champlain — "Conrad tweaks Cooper's eight-day growth of beard for the cameramen while onboard the prime recovery vessel after their Gemini 5 flight." *(NASA ID: S65-46638)*

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[1] The USAF/NASA X-15 was reusable and the three vehicles flew a cumulative 199 times between 1959 and 1968. Gemini spacecraft 2 flew the suborbital Gemini 2 flight in 1965 and the suborbital Manned Orbiting Laboratory test flight in 1966. The spacecraft intended for use in MOL was called Gemini B. The next American spacecraft to be reused was Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981 and the next American reusable space capsule was Crew Dragon Endeavour in 2021 (its maiden flight was in 2020). All Space Shuttle orbiters and Crew Dragon spacecraft have flown multiple times each.

[2] COTS stands for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and was a NASA program initiated to encourage the development of private launch vehicles and spacecraft for ISS resupply.

[3] The highest Earth orbit ever achieved by humans was carried out by Polaris Dawn in 2024 with an apogee of 870 miles (1,400 km).