The mission, flown by Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford, achieved the first crewed rendezvous with another spacecraft, its sister Gemini 7.

Although the Soviet Union had twice previously launched simultaneous pairs of Vostok spacecraft, these established radio contact with each other, but they had no ability to adjust their orbits in order to rendezvous and came no closer than several kilometers of each other, while the Gemini 6 and 7 spacecraft came as close as one foot (30 cm) and could have docked had they been so equipped.

At 23 hours and 55 minutes into the mission, while the spacecraft passed over White Sands, New Mexico, the crew was to attempt to observe a laser beam originating from the ground.

The Wasp was fitted with ground station equipment by ITT to relay live television, via the Intelsat I (nicknamed the "Early Bird") satellite.

A catastrophic failure apparently caused the vehicle to explode, as Range Safety was tracking multiple pieces of debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean.

The crews also discussed the possibility of Stafford performing an EVA from 6A to 7, swapping places with Gemini 7 pilot Jim Lovell, but the commander of Gemini 7, Frank Borman, objected, pointing out that it would require Lovell to wear an uncomfortable EVA suit on a long-duration mission.

Since the lift-off clock had started in the spacecraft, mission rules dictated that Wally Schirra, as the commander, had to immediately pull the D-ring between his knees and activate the ejection seats,[10] carrying the astronauts away from the disaster that would be the result of a fully fueled Titan II falling back onto LC-19.

His quick thinking probably saved the mission as the reliability of the Gemini ejector seats was questionable; the astronauts could have been badly injured from high g-forces as the seats had to launch them at least 800 feet, which was deemed a safe distance from an exploding Titan II.

Tom Stafford, in a NASA oral history in 1997, later recalled: So it turns out what we would have seen, had we had to do that, would have been two Roman candles going out, because we were 15 or 16 psi, pure oxygen, soaking in that for an hour and a half.

They did have some tests at China Lake where they had a simulated mock-up of Gemini capsule, but what they did is fill it full of nitrogen.

After the Stage I engines ignited and shut down, fuel (UDMH) was leaking out of the PSV drain valve.

About 60 minutes after the aborted launch, the booster and spacecraft had been made safe and the service tower raised up to it.

Examination of telemetry also showed that the Titan actually began experiencing thrust decay before the plug dropped out.

Engineers spent all night combing through the first stage, but failed to find any cause for the thrust decay.

Had the inadvertent electrical disconnect not occurred, the abort sensing system would have sent a shutoff command to the Titan at T+2.2 seconds due to the loss of Engine No.

Since launcher release and liftoff would take place at T+3.2 seconds, a pad fallback still would not have occurred in this scenario and the astronauts would have been safe.

I did a fly-around inspection of Gemini 7, literally flying rings around it, and I could move to within inches of it in perfect confidence".

Gemini 6A fired its retro-rockets and landed within 18 kilometers (11 miles) of the planned site in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Turks and Caicos.

It finally did occur there.The original patch had called the flight GTA-6 (for Gemini-Titan-Agena) and showed the Gemini craft chasing an Agena.

[citation needed] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.