Apollo9 was the third crewed mission in the United States Apollo program. Launched by a SaturnV rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on March3, 1969, and flown in low Earth orbit, the mission flight-qualified the Lunar Module (LM), showing that its crew could fly it independently, then rendezvous and dock, as would be required for Apollo11, the first crewed lunar landing. Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart tested systems and procedures critical to landing on the Moon. A spacewalk tested the extravehicular life support backpack. McDivitt and Schweickart, entering the LM through the docking tunnel, became the first humans to pass between spacecraft without going outside them, two months after Soviet cosmonauts spacewalked to transfer between Soyuz4 and Soyuz5. Apollo9, a complete success, landed in the Atlantic Ocean on March13 and was followed by Apollo10, the dress rehearsal for Apollo11. This photograph, taken by Schweickart, shows Scott performing a stand-up extravehicular activity from the Command Module Gumdrop, seen from the docked LM Spider with the Earth in the background.Photograph credit: NASA / Rusty Schweickart; edited by CoffeeandcrumbsRecently featured: Whitehead's trogonThe Palace of TruthContinental XI-1430ArchiveMore featured pictures