Gemini 3 flew America's first two-person crew in 1965

Gemini III, launched on March 23, 1965, was the first American spaceflight to carry two astronauts, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and John Young, and the first crewed spacecraft to change its own orbit.

Was Gemini III the first two-person crew in space?

No, only the first American one. The Soviet Union had already flown a multi-person crew: Voskhod 1 carried three cosmonauts on October 12, 1964, and Voskhod 2 took Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov into orbit on March 18, 1965, five days before Gemini III. What the American crew did first was steer. NASA credits Gemini III with the first orbital maneuvers of a crewed spacecraft.

Near the end of the first orbit, passing over Texas, Grissom and Young fired their thrusters for 1 minute 14 seconds, reshaping their path from 100 by 139 miles to 97 by 105 miles. “They appear to be firing good,” Young reported. A second burn 45 minutes later tilted the orbital plane by 0.02 degrees, and before retrofire they lowered their low point to 45 miles so the capsule would come down even if the retrorockets failed. Those burns were the first rehearsal of the rendezvous and docking a Moon landing would need.

Why was the capsule called Molly Brown?

Grissom’s Mercury capsule had sunk in 1961, so he named this one after the “unsinkable” Broadway heroine. He also became the first person to enter space a second time. It was the last American crewed flight run from the control room at the Cape; from Gemini IV onward, Houston took over.

Not everything went to plan. Splashdown came about 52 miles short of the target, near Grand Turk Island, after 4 hours 52 minutes. And Young’s smuggled corned beef on rye got one bite from each man before it was stowed, for fear of crumbs floating loose in the cabin.