Gemini 8's Runaway Spin, Buzz Aldrin's EVA Success, and SWARM Pole Drift

Video from the channel Cosmic - Space Documentaries about Gemini VIII, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 23:13. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary explainer piece that links three segments: the final stretch of the Gemini program, opening with the flight of Gemini 8 and closing with the success of Gemini 12; the first months of the Curiosity rover on Mars; and the European Space Agency's Swarm constellation, dedicated to studying Earth's magnetic field. Gemini 8 occupies the first few minutes of the video.

Gemini 6 and 7 had flown in formation, but docking remained undone because the Agena target vehicle planned for Gemini 6 exploded after launch. Gemini 8, with first-timers Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott, lifted off on 16 March 1966; the Agena had launched 95 minutes earlier, and docking was planned about six hours after liftoff. Scott was also to carry out the second American spacewalk. The docking was so smooth that, on the ground, there was initially doubt it had occurred, but the combined vehicle began spinning without responding to the controls. Armstrong undocked, the spin worsened, and the crew began an emergency return. Later analysis cleared the Agena: a Gemini thruster had been left firing. The flight lasted less than 11 hours, with only 30 minutes docked and no spacewalk, and ended with a splashdown in the Pacific near Japan, the only Gemini splashdown outside the Atlantic. Mission officials praised Armstrong's composure.

The account continues with the deaths of Elliot See and Charles Bassett in a T-38 at St. Louis, the stuck payload fairing on the Gemini 9A target, which Stafford called an "angry alligator", and Cernan's spacewalk, cut short by excessive exertion. Gemini 10, with John Young and Michael Collins, used an 80-second Agena burn to climb to a higher orbit and visit the Gemini 8 Agena. After the difficulties of Gemini 11, NASA trained in a pool in Baltimore, and on Gemini 12, launched on 11 November 1966, Buzz Aldrin completed all his tasks with the help of handholds and tethers.

Curiosity landed on 6 August 2012 in Gale crater and took about two years to reach Mount Sharp, which stands 5,500 m tall. Its ChemCam laser analyzes rocks up to 7 m away, and the first samples revealed sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. The three Swarm satellites, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, orbit at 490 km. According to the video, over 150 years the magnetic field has lost about 15% of its strength; the poles last reversed 780,000 years ago.