Apollo 9 at 50: The Engineering Flight That Tested the Lunar Module

On March 3, 1969, Apollo 9 launched on a purely engineering mission: to test, in Earth orbit, the spacecraft that would land people on the Moon. Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart ran systems checks and gathered data. NASA marked the flight's 50th anniversary with a short film, A Hell of a Ride, in which the crew looked back.

Testing everything

The crew knew they were the first to fly the vehicle meant to take humans to the Moon, and they felt the time pressure: everything had to go right to meet Kennedy's goal of reaching the Moon and returning within the decade. The mission, as they described it, was engineering from start to finish — engines, guidance and navigation and every other system that could be tried out in Earth orbit — so there was a great deal to do, and as much data as possible to collect, from the moment they reached orbit.

The lunar module had two jobs: land on the Moon, and then get back up to the command module for the ride home. To prove it could, the lunar module and command module separated by nearly 100 miles, and an engine burn brought them back together for a challenging rendezvous and docking that showed the hardware worked.

A hard docking

Docking with the lunar module was disorienting. Normally the pilot looked forward to dock, but here he had to look up, so the controls did not respond the way he was used to, and it was hard to get the coordinate system straight in his head. The docking mechanism itself, the crew recalled, was an unbelievably complex tangle of springs, levers and latches.

Outside

Both spacecraft were depressurized so that Schweickart could climb outside and move over to the command module, proving it could be done. The astronaut outside remembered edging partway up the front of the lunar module, careful not to puncture his suit on the antennas, in total quiet, with nobody talking and the beautiful Earth in view. Scott opened his hatch too, so all three were effectively out in the vacuum. The moment felt historic not just for the astronauts but for everyone alive — all of them on one small planet, as far as anyone knew the only home of life in its corner of the universe, beginning to move out from it.

The vehicle, they said, worked beautifully: an amazing machine, and a hell of a ride. Apollo 9 paved the way for the Apollo missions that followed.

Sources

Based on the NASA video "Celebrating 50 Years of Apollo 9 - 'A Hell of a Ride'" (NASA Headquarters; NASA Image and Video Library), a work of the United States government in the public domain; the crew's recollections are rewritten in hubnx's own words.