Gemini 3 was the first crewed Earth-orbiting mission of the two-man spacecraft program. Launched from Complex 19 at Cape Canaveral, Florida on March 23, 1965, at 9:24 a.m. EST, the mission was co-piloted by astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John Young.

The Gemini heatshield was a dish-shaped structure that formed the large end of the reentry module. Constructed of a load-carrying Fiberglas sandwich structure consisting of two 5-ply faceplates of resin-impregnated glass cloth separated by a 0.65inch thick Fiberglas honeycomb core, an additional Fiberglas honeycomb was bonded to the convex side of the sandwich and filled with Dow-Corning DC-325 ablative material.

The attached segment of Gemini 3 heatshield was exposed to the intense frictional heat of reentry into the atmosphere.