Captain Eugene Cernan was one of the fourteen astronauts selected by NASA in October 1963. He occupied the pilot seat alongside of command pilot Tom Stafford on the Gemini XI mission. During this 3-day flight which began on June 3, 1966, the spacecraft achieved a circular orbit of 161 statute miles. The crew used three different techniques to effect rendezvous with the previously launched Augmented Target Docking Adopters. Cernan, the second American to walk in space, completed two hours and twenty minutes with a perfect re-entry and recovery as Gemini IX landed within one and a half miles of the prime recovery ship USS WASP and three eighths of a mile off the predetermined target. Cernan subsequently served as backup pilot for Gemini 12 and as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 7.