Project Gemini:
After the pioneering manned space flights of Project Mercury from 1961 to 1963 and before a man could actually land and walk on the surface of the Moon with Project Apollo, a program was required to test all that needed to be done to reach the goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: To land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s.

This intermediate program was Project Gemini, a project of the United States' second generation of manned spacecraft.