By spring of 1965, the United States remained behind in  the space race but were closing the gap.  The Soviet's had achieved the first multimanned spacecraft in late 1964 and performed the first spacewalk in March of 1965.

On June 3, 1965, the United States launched Gemini-IV.  This mission was the second multi-manned American mission and it had one major goal, perform a spacewalk.  

On the first day of the mission, the spacecraft was depresserized.  While mission commander Jim McDivitt remained inside (although exposed to the vacuum of space since the hatch was opened), pilot Ed White floated out of the capsule.  White remained outside the capsule for 36 minutes, about twice as long as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov had done on his historic walk three months before.  During the spacewalk, White remained tethered to the capsule by a line that included his oxygen supply.  At this time, a oxygen backpack system was still 4 years away.

White safely returned to the capsule and the mission continued.  Gemini-IV returned to Earth on June 7th having successifully completed its 4 day flight.

Not only did this mission demonstrait that the American's could preform a spacewalk.  It also pushed the NASA spaceflight endurance record from 1 day 10 hours, to 4 days 2 hours.  Although it didn't break the international endurance record (4 days, 23 hours set by the Soviet Vostok 5 mission in 1963) it demonstrated that NASA had caught up to the Russians.

From this point on, NASA began to take the lead in the space race and they never looked back.


Mission Patch


Crew: Ed White (Left), Jim McDivitt (Right)





Following Gemini-IV, mission commander Jim McDivitt was assigned to the crew of Apollo 9.  Serving as the missiom commander, he helped perform the first manned tests of the Lunar Module in March of 1969.  He retired from NASA in 1972.  He retired from the USAF at the rank of Brigadier General around the same time.

Ed White was assigned to the crew of Apollo 1 following Gemini-IV.  He was given the position of command module pilot on the very first manned test of the Apollo spacecraft.  Three weeks before the planned launch of Apollo 1, there was a fire in the capsule during a routine systems test.  Ed White tragically perished along with the other two members of the crew in the fire on January 27, 1967.  Lt. Colonel Edward White was bured at the United States Military Academy at West Point.