page_title: Manned Orbiting Laboratory
section_title: Test flight
hierarchical_section_title: Manned Orbiting Laboratory / Test flight
caption_attribution_description: English: A Titan IIIC rocket lifts off to test a modified unmanned Gemini capsule (Gemini-B) as part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. The November 3, 1966, launch included a simulated lab module. It was as close to space as the project would come.
context_page_description: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was part of the United States Air Force's human spaceflight program. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations to be used for satellite reconnaissance purposes, and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 40-day missions, and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft.
  The MOL program was announced to the public on 10 December 1963 as an inhabited platform to prove the utility of putting people in space for military missions; its use for satellite reconnaissance was a secret black project. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program, including Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., the first African-American to be chosen as an astronaut. The prime contractor for the spacecraft was McDonnell Aircraft; the laboratory was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company.
context_section_description: MOL Test flight OPS 0855 was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 on 3 November 1966 at 13:50:42 UTC, on a Titan IIIC-9. The flight consisted of a MOL mockup built from a Titan II propellant tank, and the refurbished capsule from the Gemini 2 mission as a prototype Gemini B spacecraft. This was the first time an American spacecraft intended for human spaceflight had flown in space twice, albeit without a crew. The simulated laboratory contained eleven experiments.
  After the Gemini B prototype separated for a sub-orbital reentry, the MOL mockup continued into orbit and released three satellites. A hatch installed in the Gemini's heat shield—intended to provide access to the MOL during crewed operations—was tested during the capsule's reentry. The Gemini capsule was recovered near Ascension Island in the South Atlantic by the USS La Salle after a flight of 33 minutes.
caption: MOL test launch OPS 0855, 3 November 1966, Cape Canaveral, FL
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