Apollo 9

• COMMANDERJames McDivittA veteran of Gemini 4 (1965), which he commanded as pilot on the first multi-day American mission to include a spacewalk. After Apollo 9 he might have been offered command of a Moon-landing mission, but instead left the astronaut corps to become manager of the entire Apollo program.Open profile →
• COMMAND MODULE PILOTDavid ScottA veteran of Gemini 8 (1966) alongside Neil Armstrong — the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, dramatically cut short by a thruster malfunction. After Apollo 9 he commanded the Apollo 15 landing mission in 1971.Open profile →
• LUNAR MODULE PILOTRusty SchweickartA civilian test pilot with no prior spaceflight experience — Apollo 9 was his only spaceflight. Space sickness cut short his planned spacewalk, but he still became the first in the Apollo program to test the PLSS life-support backpack in open space.Open profile →

Select a phase to read what happened. Every chapter has its own detailed page.

1. 01 · 3. března 1969Gumdrop and Spider — the first complete Apollo spacecraft
2. 02 · 6.–7. března 1969The “Red Rover” spacewalk and Spider flying alone
3. 03 · 8.–13. března 1969The last Atlantic splashdown for half a century

3. března 1969

Gumdrop and Spider — the first complete Apollo spacecraft

Apollo 9 was the first crewed flight of the complete Apollo spacecraft — the command and service module TOGETHER with the lunar module. Launch, originally set for 28 February, was pushed back five days by NASA because the entire crew had colds.

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Crew

3

Launch

3. 3. 1969

Splashdown

13. 3. 1969

Duration

10 d 1 h

Launch vehicle

Saturn V (AS-504)

Call signs

Gumdrop / Spider

Orbit

Země (LEO)

EVA duration

~1 h

1. 01Apollo 9 was the first crewed mission with the complete Apollo stack — command, service AND lunar module together.
2. 02The crew invented the call signs “Gumdrop” and “Spider” themselves; NASA initially rejected them as too informal.
3. 03For the first time in history, humans flew in a craft (the lunar module Spider) that could not by itself return them to Earth.
4. 04Schweickart’s space sickness cut short the planned spacewalk — he still became the first in the Apollo program to test the PLSS backpack outside the spacecraft.
5. 05Apollo 9 splashed down in the Atlantic. In 2019, Crew Dragon Demo-1 concluded an uncrewed test of a crew-capable spacecraft with an Atlantic splashdown.
6. 06Buzz Aldrin watched Gumdrop and Spider redock from Mission Control and later said he knew right then that Apollo 11 would fly to land on the Moon.

• ProgramApollo
• TopicApollo 8
• MissionApollo 11
• TopicSaturn V

• ◉ Real photographModules “Gumdrop” and “Spider” docked in orbit.