The successful docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station Friday is a landmark moment in opening space to wider use, NASA officials say.

The first commercially operated cargo ship destined for the International Space Station entered the record books Friday when the station's crew confirmed that SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft was securely docked to the orbiting outpost.

Dragon cleared its first major hurdle of the day Friday when station flight engineer Don Petitt, the mission's grappler-in-chief, captured the Dragon capsule with the station's robotic arm as the craft free-floated some 30 feet from the docking port.

Houston? Station. Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail, Dr. Petitt said as NASA's mission control confirmed that the arm's grip was solid.

Without skipping a beat, he deadpanned, We're thinking this sim[ulation] went really well. We're ready to turn it around and do it for real, as applause and hugs broke out in two control rooms NASA's and SpaceX's at the company's Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters.

Until its conclusion on May 31, the mission remains a test flight combining into one mission the objectives initially planned for two launches this year. But itssuccess so far signals that a company NASA has helped nurture can perform the difficult feat of lofting a craft capable of catching up with another spacecraft traveling at faster-than-bullet speeds, matching its pace, and safely docking with it something no other privately-operated spacecraft has done.

Indeed, Dragon was not merely carrying a demonstration payload of roughly 1,000 pounds of food, clothing, and other items to the space station. It was carrying the hopes of a US commercial spaceflight industry aiming to build a thriving space-transportation sector in much the same way fledgling air carriers emerged during the early decades of the 20th Century to build a thriving commercial air-transportation industry.

Over the years, NASA officials have spoken of the firsts the US space program has accomplished, said Michael Suffredini, space-station program manager at NASA, at a news briefing Friday afternoon.

This rates right at the top, he said of the partnership between NASA and SpaceX. NASA established requirements SpaceX had to meet operating near the space station. Beyond those requirements, he said, a contractor relatively independent of NASA designed on its own a spacecraft, [then] completely built and tested and flew this spacecraft in a manner that has been remarkable.

The rendezvous and docking Friday gave participating space-station crew members a workout.

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NASA: SpaceX docking ranks near top of space-age 'firsts'

Scientists have responded in a big way to NASA's call to help reformulate its Mars robotic exploration strategy, submitting about 400 ideas and Red Planet mission concepts to the space agency.

NASA's Mars program suffered deep cuts in President Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget, which was released in February. In response, NASA pulled out of the European-led ExoMars mission, which aims to launch an orbiter and a rover to the Red Planet in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

The agency also undertook a broad rethink of its Mars strategy, to figure out how best to explore the Red Planet with reduced funding. NASA asked the scientific community for ideas and was expecting to get about 200 proposals at its recent Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration Workshop in Houston, officials said.

Instead, twice that many submissions poured in from individuals and teams that included professional researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, NASA centers, federal laboratories, industry and international partner organizations. [ 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars ]

"This strong response sends a clear message that exploring Mars is important to future exploration," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. "The challenge now will be to select the best ideas for the next phase."

The ideas that survive the first cut will be presented during a workshop held June 12-14 in Houston. The workshop will help NASA's Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG) develop options for a strategy for exploration beginning as early as 2018, and stretching into the next decade and beyond, officials said.

The MPPG will be guided in part by the goals laid out by the U.S. National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which was released in 2011. The survey ranked a Mars sample-return mission as a top priority.

Obama has also charged NASA with getting astronauts to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

The MPPG is expected to produce a report by the end of the summer. This report will be assessed by a team of NASA officials in charge of the agency-wide Mars reformulation strategy. Grunsfeld is chairman of this group, which also includes Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate; NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati; and NASA chief technologist Mason Peck.

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NASA flooded with 400 ideas to explore Mars

Will OpenStack be grounded now that NASA is no longer involved with developing OpenStack? Image: scazon/Flickr

NASA is reported to be withdrawing its participation with OpenStack, which the space agency co-founded with Rackspace.

OpenStack has come into its own, IBMs Dr. Angel Luis Diaz wrote for Cloudline in April. So with Dell, IBM, Cisco, HP, Yahoo, Rackspace, and Red Hat on board, the time has come to scale back involvement, NASA says.

Karen Petraska, from NASAs CIO office, said the agency is not interested in competing with commercial cloud companies, and would rather be a smart consumer of commercial cloud services, reports Web Host Industry News.

The report also said NASA would also cease its developmental involvement with cloud infrastructure solution Nebula.

Cloudline contributor Alexander Haislip writes in OpenStack Optimism Overrides Confusion:

Today, there are more questions than answers [about OpenStack], which stands to reason given OpenStacks young age and the quantity of collaborators. Yet the evidence suggests large companies are grabbing hold of OpenStacks technology and are going to ride it into the big businesses that want cloud computing.

Haislip adds:

Theres clearly value in OpenStack. Few techies want VMware or Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a Microsoftian hegemony in the cloud where tinkering is impossible and theyre forced into a whole universe of other, unrelated or undesirable products. Few business executives want to pay for proprietary software, especially for systems at scale, if it can be at all avoided. It comes down to a question of adopting and adapting the immature OpenStack or paying through the nose for a proprietary competitor.

Weigh in: Will NASA withdrawing from the OpenStack launch pad hurt the open source cloud platform? Or is there no stopping the OpenStack rocket, as Haislip writes, simply because it is the anti-Microsoft (read: lock-in)?

Originally posted here:

OpenStack Launch Partner NASA Grounds Development

The successful docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station Friday is a landmark moment in opening space to wider use, NASA officials say.

The first commercially operated cargo ship destined for the International Space Station entered the record books Friday when the station's crew confirmed that SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft was securely docked to the orbiting outpost.

Dragon cleared its first major hurdle of the day Friday when station flight engineer Don Petitt, the mission's grappler-in-chief, captured the Dragon capsule with the station's robotic arm as the craft free-floated some 30 feet from the docking port.

Houston? Station. Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail, Dr. Petitt said as NASA's mission control confirmed that the arm's grip was solid.

Without skipping a beat, he deadpanned, We're thinking this sim[ulation] went really well. We're ready to turn it around and do it for real, as applause and hugs broke out in two control rooms NASA's and SpaceX's at the company's Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters.

Until its conclusion on May 31, the mission remains a test flight combining into one mission the objectives initially planned for two launches this year. But itssuccess so far signals that a company NASA has helped nurture can perform the difficult feat of lofting a craft capable of catching up with another spacecraft traveling at faster-than-bullet speeds, matching its pace, and safely docking with it something no other privately-operated spacecraft has done.

Indeed, Dragon was not merely carrying a demonstration payload of roughly 1,000 pounds of food, clothing, and other items to the space station. It was carrying the hopes of a US commercial spaceflight industry aiming to build a thriving space-transportation sector in much the same way fledgling air carriers emerged during the early decades of the 20th Century to build a thriving commercial air-transportation industry.

Over the years, NASA officials have spoken of the firsts the US space program has accomplished, said Michael Suffredini, space-station program manager at NASA, at a news briefing Friday afternoon.

This rates right at the top, he said of the partnership between NASA and SpaceX. NASA established requirements SpaceX had to meet operating near the space station. Beyond those requirements, he said, a contractor relatively independent of NASA designed on its own a spacecraft, [then] completely built and tested and flew this spacecraft in a manner that has been remarkable.

The rendezvous and docking Friday gave participating space-station crew members a workout.

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NASA: SpaceX docking ranks near top of space-age 'firsts' (+video)

click here to continue to article cliquez ici pour lire l'article weiter zum Artikel clicca qui per visualizzare l'articolo weiter zum Artikel ir a la noticia klik hier om door te gaan naar het artikel Yazya devam etmek iin tklayn Tovbb a cikkre

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NASA denies Iranian cyberattack

The moon is about to become crowded.

In the next few years a slew of countries, including China, India, and Japan, are looking to put unmanned probes on the lunar surface. But more unprecedented are the 26 teams currently racing to win the Google Lunar X Prize a contest that will award $20 million to the first private company to land a robot on the lunar surface, travel a third of a mile, and send back a high-definition image before 2015.

With all this activity, NASA is somewhat nervous about its own lunar history. The agency recently released a set of guidelines that aim to preserve important heritage locations such as the Apollo landing and Ranger impact sites. The report, available since 2011 to members of the private spaceflight community, was publicly posted at NASAs website and officially accepted by the X Prize foundation on May 24.

NASA has recognized that these sites are important to mankind and have to be protected to make sure theres no undue damage done to them, said John Thornton, president of Astrobotic Technology Inc., a company competing for the prize.

Though NASA has no way of enforcing the requirements, they are designed to protect materials and scientific equipment at historical lunar sites as well as future landing sites. The guidelines have been made available internationally, and the agency welcomes other nations to participate in and improve upon them, said NASA spokesperson Joshua Buck in an e-mail.

NASA is asking anyone that makes it to the lunar surface to keep their landing at least 1.2 miles away from any Apollo site and about 1,600 feet from the five Ranger impact sites. The distance should keep the old equipment safe from a terrible accident or collision. It will also would put the new equipment over the lunar horizon relative to the relics, and prevent any moon dust known to be a highly abrasive material from sandblasting NASAs old machines.

The Apollo 11 and 17 sites the first and last places visited by man are singled out in particular for extra care and respect. Robots are prohibited from visiting both sites and are requested to remain outside a large radius (250 feet for Apollo 11 and 740 feet for Apollo 17) to prevent a stray rover from accidentally harming hardware or erasing any footprints.

Only one misstep could forever damage this priceless human treasure, reads the report.

Looking toward a possible high-traffic lunar future, the report also warns that frequent and repeated visits would have a cumulative and irreversible degrading effect on the historical sites. Other guidelines ask that rovers avoid kicking dust onto existing scientific experiments, like the laser-ranging lunar reflectors that are used to measure the distance between the Earth and moon.

Excerpt from:

Keep Out: NASA Asks Future Moon Visitors to Respect Its Stuff

For its 40th birthday, one of the United States' oldest ongoing satellite missions is celebrating by handing out some unique presents.

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NASA Contest Offers 'Presents from Space'

May 24, 2012

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com

NASA announced guidelines established to try and protect lunar historic sites as engineers and scientists aim their sites for the moon.

The new guidelines will be taken into account by the X Prize Foundation as it judges mobility plans submitted by 26 teams trying to become the first privately-funded entity to visit the moon.

NASA said it recognizes that both nations and the companies have ambitions to reach the moon, so it wanted to develop the recommendations to preserve areas like mans first lunar steps.

The space agency is cooperating with the X Prize Foundation and the Google Lunar X Prize teams to develop the recommendations.

NASA and the next generation of lunar explorers share a common interest in preserving humanitys first steps on another celestial body and protecting ongoing science from the potentially damaging effects of nearby landers, the space agency said in a press release.

NASA said it assembled the guidelines using data from previous lunar studies and an analysis of the unmanned lander Surveyor 3s samples after Apollo 12 landed in 1969.

Experts from the historic and scientific communities also helped to contribute to the recommendations. The guidelines are not mandatory U.S. or international requirements, but are recommended to ensure landmarks created by the Apollo mission remain in place.

During the Google Lunar X Prize, the first place prize will go to the privately-funded team that builds a rover that lands successfully on the moon, and explores it by moving at least one-third of a mile while returning high-definition footage back to Earth. The winner of this prize will be awarded $30 million.

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NASA Builds Recommendations To Preserve Lunar Sites

Washington, May 25 (ANI): A NASA scientist has accurately determined the mass of a nearby asteroid from millions of miles away.

Excerpt from:

NASA scientist weighs space rock from millions of miles away

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, May 24, 2012 Source: NASA Science Mission Directorate

NASA: Research Shows Existence of Reduced Carbon on Mars

NASA-funded research on Mars meteorites that landed on Earth shows strong evidence that very large molecules containing carbon, which is a key ingredient for the building blocks of life, can originate on the Red Planet. These macromolecules are not of biological origin, but they are indicators that complex carbon chemistry has taken place on Mars.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who found reduced carbon molecules now have better insight into the chemical processes taking place on Mars. Reduced carbon is carbon that is bonded to hydrogen or itself. Their findings also may assist in future quests for evidence of life on the Red Planet. The findings are published in Thursday's online edition of Science Express.

"These findings show that the storage of reduced carbon molecules on Mars occurred throughout the planet's history and might have been similar to processes that occurred on the ancient Earth," said Andrew Steele, lead author of the paper and researcher from Carnegie. "Understanding the genesis of these non-biological, carbon-containing macromolecules on Mars is crucial for developing future missions to detect evidence of life on our neighboring planet."

Finding molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen has been one objective of past and present Mars missions. Such molecules have been found previously in Mars meteorites, but scientists have disagreed about how the carbon in them was formed and whether it came from Mars. This new information proves Mars can produce organic carbon.

"Although this study has not yielded evidence that Mars has or once may have supported life, it does address some important questions about the sources of organic carbon on Mars," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's Astrobiology Program at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "With the Curiosity rover scheduled to land in August, these new research results may help Mars Science Laboratory scientists fine-tune their investigations on the surface of the planet by understanding where organic carbon may be found and how it is preserved."

Scientists have theorized that the large carbon macromolecules detected on Martian meteorites could have originated from terrestrial contamination from Earth or other meteorites, or chemical reactions or biological activity on Mars.

Steele's team examined samples from 11 Martian meteorites from a period spanning about 4.2 billion years of Martian history. They detected large carbon compounds in 10 of them. The molecules were found inside grains of crystallized minerals.

Using an array of sophisticated research techniques, the team was able to show that at least some of the macromolecules of carbon were indigenous to the meteorites themselves and not contamination from Earth.

Excerpt from:

NASA: Research Shows Existence of Reduced Carbon on Mars

The competition will be held June 16, where NASA will award prize money based on how well the robots complete phase two

NASA is holding a competition for the creation of autonomous rovers in Massachusetts next month, which will ideally be used forplanetary missionsin the future.

The competition, called the Sample Return Robot Challenge, will allow private and public teams to compete in a contest for the best autonomous robot for future space missions. NASA is spending $1.5 million total on the contest, which will be held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

NASA is looking for a team that can create an unmanned, smaller robot that is approximately 1.5 cubic meters and 175 pounds. The winning robot must be able to explore many types of environments, search for specific items and collect them. However, the robot cannot use GPS or an internet connection because these kinds of systems are restricted to Earth. It also cannot use air-cooling or ultrasonic rangefinders because of the lack of air in other planetary environments.

Phase one of the challenge is to have each of the competing robots collect a sample within a quarter of an hour. When this task is successfully completed, robots can move on to phase two, where they are expected to collect 10 separate samples in just two hours and return them to a certain area.

There are currently 11 final teams that will compete. Some of the contenders include the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Waterloo, SpacePRIDE, and True Vision. All teams are U.S. and Canada-based.

NASA is ultimately looking for an autonomous rover that can be sent on planetary missions in the future to collect certain items in varied terrains.

Last May, NASA bid farewell to itsMars rover named Spirit, which spent six years exploring Mars before falling silent for an entire year and finally being put to rest. Later, in November 2011, NASA launched a new Mars rover called Curiosity to the Red Planet in an effort to continue exploring the Martian surface.

NASA rover Curiosityis a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered machine meant for the exploration of Mars in hopes of finding evidence of microscopic life. It is the size of a Mini Cooper, and about four times as heavy as the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Curiosity has a large robot arm, a weather station, a laser that can vaporize rocks at seven meters, a percussive drill, and 4.8kg of plutonium-238.

The competition will be held June 16, where NASA will award prize money based on how well the robots complete phase two.

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NASA Hosting $1.5 Million Autonomous Rover Contest

May 25, 2012

Image Credit: NASA

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com

NASA said it has received 400 mission concepts from scientists and engineers for a future Mars mission.

Scientists and engineers submitted their ideas to the Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration Workshop in Houston, which was an event put together by NASAs Mars Exploration Program.

Both individuals and teams submitted their visions to the NASA program for a new strategy to explore the Red Planet.

The space agency is reformulating the Mars Exploration Program to enable it to reach high-priority science goals, as well as President Barack Obamas ambitions to have man walk on Mars in the future.

This strong response sends a clear message that exploring Mars is important to future exploration, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said in a press release. The challenge now will be to select the best ideas for the next phase.

NASA will be selecting certain concepts out of the 400 for a workshop June 12 through 14, which will be hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

The scientists behind the ideas that are selected for the workshop will be invited to present and discuss concepts, options, capabilities and innovations aimed at advancing mans reach for the study of Mars.

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Future Mars Mission Submissions Pour In To NASA

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, May 24, 2012 Source: NASA Science Mission Directorate

NASA Receives Widespread Concepts for Future Mars Missions

WASHINGTON -- NASA's call to scientists and engineers to help plan a new strategy to explore Mars has resulted in almost double the amount of expected submissions with unique and bold ideas.

About 400 concepts or abstracts were submitted to the Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration Workshop in Houston, which was organized to gather input for the reformulation of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Submissions came from individuals and teams that included professional researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, NASA centers, federal laboratories, industry, and international partner organizations.

NASA is reformulating the Mars Exploration Program to be responsive to high-priority science goals and President Obama's challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s.

"This strong response sends a clear message that exploring Mars is important to future exploration," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington and an astrophysicist and astronaut. "The challenge now will be to select the best ideas for the next phase."

Selected abstracts will be presented during a workshop June 12-14 hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Selectees are now being invited to present and discuss concepts, options, capabilities and innovations to advance Mars exploration. Workshop discussion will help inform a strategy for exploration within available resources beginning as early as 2018, and stretching into the next decade and beyond. Proceedings will be streamed live online.

"Developing abstracts is very time consuming, requiring intense preparation, and we appreciate the fabulous response," said Doug McCuistion, director, NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington. "Even though space is limited, to ensure transparency in the process anyone can observe the scientific and engineering deliberations via the Web."

Based on the abstracts selected, associated working groups will consider the ideas and concepts in depth during the workshop. Near-term ideas will be taken into consideration for early mission planning in the 2018-2024 timeframe, while mid- to longer-term ideas will inform program-level architecture planning for 2026 and beyond.

The Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG), tasked with developing options for a reformulated Mars Exploration Program, will consider the workshop inputs for the various options, taking into consideration budgetary, programmatic, scientific, and technical constraints.

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NASA Receives Widespread Concepts for Future Mars Missions

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo ship on Friday, the first privately owned vehicle to reach the orbital outpost. Using the station's 58-foot long (17.7-meter) robotic crane, NASA astronaut Don Pettit snared Dragon at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) as the two spacecraft zoomed 250 miles over ...

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Astronauts snare SpaceX Dragon capsule: NASA

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon capsule lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force station

REUTERS/Scott Audette

Talk about outsourcing.

NASA took a giant leap toward effective irrelevance today with the 10:43 AM launch of the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Youve never heard of the Falcon 9? How about PayPal, then? Good, because they were both produced by the same guyentrepreneur and all-around brainiac Elon Musk. Get used to the name since before long he may be the only guy who can get Americans into space.

(See the top 50 space moments since Sputnik.)

When President Obama took office nearly two years ago, he inherited a mess of woes from the outgoing administration, but ex-President Bush did leave him one gem: a re-invigorated NASA that was working aggressively to put human beings back on the moon. Spacecraft were being designed, boosters were being built, factories were being re-tooled, metal was being cut. That came essentially to a halt with a new White House policy to scrap the new lunar program, stand down the new boosters and leave it largely to the private sector to build rockets and ferry Americans into orbit. The moon would be taken off the table, but other deep space destinations such as asteroid flybys would still be a possibilitysomeday.

(See a video tour of SpaceXs facilities.)

Two big firms are currently vying to be the governments prime supplier: Orbital Sciences, in Dulles, Va., and SpaceX, based in Texas and California. SpaceX is Musks operation, and the company vaulted to a big lead with its launch today. In July, a Falcon 9 successfully put a mock-up of the companys Dragon space capsule into orbit. Todays flight is a two-orbit, 3 hr. and 30 min. mission, which is intended not just to get the Dragon payload into space, but return it successfully for a splashdown in the Pacific.

(See the top 10 NASA flubs.)

Thats the smallest of small potatoes for NASA, but big news for the private sector. If the mission is successful, it positions SpaceX to become the principle taxi service to and from the International Space Station. That will become especially important next year when the space shuttles are retired, leaving Americans dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get to and from orbit.

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SpaceX Flight Launches: Could Private Space Make NASA Irrelevant?

Scientists have responded in a big way to NASA's call to help reformulate its Mars robotic exploration strategy, submitting about 400 ideas and Red Planet mission concepts to the space agency.

Excerpt from:

Mars or Bust! Scientists Flood NASA With 400 Ideas to Explore Red Planet

21-05-2012 09:21 The most recent evaluations of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) project confirmed all systems go for TDRS-K, a third generation upgrade of the orbiting communications network. TDRS-K is scheduled for launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida during the 2012 holiday season. The launch of TDRS-K will begin the replenishment of the fleet through the development and deployment of the next generation spacecraft. These satellites will ensure NASA's Space Network continues to provide around-the-clock, high throughput communications services to NASA's missions and serving the scientific community and human spaceflight program for years to come. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: Or find us on Twitter:

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NASA | TDRS: Heart of Communication - Video

22-05-2012 05:16 NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed media representatives (Tuesday May 22) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida following SpaceX NASA demonstration flight launch to the International Space Station.

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NASA ADMINISTRATOR TALKS WITH MEDIA AFTER SPACEX LAUNCH - Video

According to The Wall Street Journal, NASA is considering sanctioning stays by private space tourists on the International Space Station. If the change is implemented, it will represent a change in NASA's attitude toward space tourism.

Excerpt from:

NASA May Sponsor Its Own Space Tourism Program

On May 21, 1965, NASA released the Gemini 4 press kit. It opened with the standard mission description, in this case for a four-day orbital flight that would send commander Jim McDivitt and pilot Ed White around the Earth 62 times to evaluate "the effects of extended spaceflight on crew performance and physical condition."

Then there was an intriguing page that hinted at something bigger: "No decision has been made whether in the Gemini 4 mission the crew will engage in extravehicular activity... A decision to undertake the extravehicular test can be made as late as the day before the launch." The possibility of an EVA on Gemini 4 came as a surprise not only the American people that day, but to many within NASA as well.

PHOTOS: The Gemini Missions: Paving the Path for Apollo

EVAs, colloquially known as spacewalks, were one of the three main program goals for NASA's Gemini program designed to support the Apollo program. If NASA was going to send men all the way to the moon, there was no point in having them sit inside and look out the window. They were going outside.

The original Gemini program plan called for a tight schedule with launches every eight to ten weeks. Every mission would add something new to NASA's repertoire with EVAs expected sometime after Gemini 6; Gemini 4 was designed for a week long endurance test using new fuel cells instead of batteries around June of 1965.

But mid-way through 1964 that schedule was starting to slip. The fuel cells weren't going to be ready for Gemini 4. The US Air Force Agena target vehicle destined for orbital rendezvous practice was also too far from flight ready to be counted on for Gemini 4.

With the mission plan in tatters, Robert Gilruth, the director of the Manned Spaceflight Center, proposed that Gemini 4 be reconfigured into the first EVA flight. It was a bold plan, moving the EVA goal forward by two flights. But if all the hardware could be certified and the crew trained in time, why not?

The new mission was already percolating when White and McDivitt were announced as the crew on July 24, 1964. The astronauts were two among the very select group of people who knew about the EVA goal for their flight. As pilot, White would be the one stepping out.

ANALYSIS: The Case of the Contraband Corned Beef Sandwich

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NASA's Bold 'Plan X' Changed Spaceflight History