Apollo 9 – Testing Lunar Module

Launch date: March 3, 1969
Landing date: March 13, 1969

This year we will celebrate the 50 years anniversary of the first human walking on our Moon. In my opinion, this is the pinnacle of human exploration so far and I would like to contribute to the celebrations with a series of posts talking about the Apollo missions on that year 1969.

The first one was Apollo 9 mission. The second and last Earth orbiting mission (not reaching the Moon) and the first crewed Lunar Module (LM) test.

The primary objective of the mission was to test all aspects of the LM in Earth orbit, including operation of the LM as an independent self-sufficient spacecraft and performance of docking manoeuvres. Basically the goal was to simulate an actual lunar mission. The mission will also test what might happen if, for some reason, a command module and landing module could not redock at the end of lunar operations: could astronauts bridge the gulf by making an emergency spacewalk?

The docking and rendezvous simulations between the LM and command module were successful giving a huge amount of data for the next mission Apollo 10; in which these manoeuvres were planned to be done in Moon orbit. The tests on spacesuits and spacewalks (EVA) were determinant for future missions and gave us amazing pictures (photo1, photo2).

One anecdote of this mission was on March 6. While the vehicles were docked, Schweickart crawled out of the LM front hatch but his ambitious schedules was simplified at the last moment because of a nasty attack of motion sickness he suffered a few hours earlier! Instead they spend most of the time taking pictures. Luckily Schweickart recovered his equilibrium in time for six-hour solo performance the following day, successfully carrying out almost all the planned tasks for a lunar touchdown.

On March 13, Apollo 9 splashed down in the Atlantic ocean 180 miles east of Bahamas.

To sum-up, the mission proved the Lunar Module worthy for crewed spaceflight and ran the latest tests for the ultimate goal of landing on the Moon.