Ed White becomes the first American to spacewalk

Over the Pacific on 3 June 1965, Ed White pushed himself out of Gemini 4's open hatch and into the sunlight, a small gas gun in his hand and the blue curve of Earth rolling beneath his boots. For 23 minutes he tumbled, glided, and laughed his way across the United States at orbital speed, photographed by commander James McDivitt through the window. When capsule communicator Gus Grissom finally ordered him back inside, White answered that coming in was the saddest moment of his life.

The spacewalk was improvised right to the edge. White's hand-held manoeuvring unit exhausted its compressed gas after roughly three minutes, leaving him to steer by twisting his body and tugging the 8-metre tether. The hatch had jammed when it was opened, and it jammed again when White tried to lock it; floating in their suits, the two astronauts wrestled it shut as darkness approached. Had the latch not caught, neither man could have survived reentry. A spare thermal glove slipped out during the exercise and sailed off into orbit, an early piece of space litter.

The EVA was only the opening act of America's first long-duration flight. McDivitt and White stayed up four days and 62 orbits, quadrupling the US endurance record and showing astronauts could function for the length of a lunar journey. Gemini 4 was also the first mission run from the new Mission Control Center in Houston, the room that would manage every American crewed flight through Apollo and beyond. On 7 June the capsule splashed down in the western Atlantic, where the USS Wasp recovered two exhausted, jubilant crewmen.