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Apollo 9 (March 3–13, 1969) was the third human spaceflight in NASA's Apollo program.Flown in low Earth orbit, it was the second crewed Apollo mission that the United States launched via a Saturn V rocket, and was the first flight of the full Apollo spacecraft: the command and service module (CSM) with the Lunar Module (LM).
The Apollo program included three other crewed missions: Apollo 1 (AS-204) did not launch and its crew died in a ground-based capsule fire, while Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 were low Earth orbit missions that only tested spacecraft components and docking maneuvers. Apollo missions 18, 19, and 20 were canceled.
This crewed flight was to have followed the first three uncrewed flights. After the fire which killed the AS-204 crew on the pad during a test and training exercise, uncrewed Apollo flights resumed to test the Saturn V launch vehicle and the Lunar Module; these were designated Apollo 4, 5 and 6. The first crewed Apollo mission was thus Apollo 7.
The Apollo 9 crew, McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart. Apollo 8 is on the launch pad behind them. The next day McDivitt and Schweickart donned their space suits and entered the LM. This was the first time that astronauts had transferred from one spacecraft to another. They then tested the LM's propulsion systems.
The Earth-orbit test would become Apollo 9. [32] The crew who had been scheduled for Apollo 8, led by Jim McDivitt, became the Apollo 9 crew, [33] and Worden became part of that mission's support crew along with Mitchell and Jack Lousma. [34] Worden was named as backup command module pilot (CMP) for the Apollo 12 flight.
Councilman Howard Smith, in his late 20s, was serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Guadalcanal as the space race was underway.
Apollo 7 heads into orbit with its crew of three, 1968. This is a list of all crewed spaceflights throughout history. Beginning in 1961 with the flight of Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1, crewed spaceflight occurs when a human crew flies a spacecraft into outer space.
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