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Format is approximately 12 inches by 4.5 inches. 16 pages, plus covers. Illustrations (most with color). Small crease at center. Apollo 9's first five days were crowded because there was a desire to achieve the major mission objectives quickly, in case the flight needed to be ended early. The remainder of the flight was taken up with landmark tracking and valuable experiments in Earth photography. The last five days also gave the crew opportunities to further checkout the Command Module in tests important to the Apollo Program. With the completion of the Apollo 9 mission, the Earth-orbital phase of the Apollo Program was ended. The next flight would take Spider to within 10 miles of the surface of the Moon. Soon thereafter, another Spider would carry two Americans to the lunar surface, and Man for the first time would set foot on another celestial body. Apollo 9 was a March 1969 human spaceflight, the third 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 mission was flown to qualify the LM for lunar orbit operations in preparation for the first Moon landing by demonstrating its descent and ascent propulsion systems, showing that its crew could fly it independently, then rendezvous and dock with the CSM again, as would be required for the first crewed lunar landing. Other objectives of the flight included firing the LM descent engine to propel the spacecraft stack as a backup mode (as would be required on the Apollo 13 mission), and use of the portable life support system backpack outside the LM cabin. The three-man crew consisted of Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. During the ten-day mission, they tested systems and procedures critical to landing on the Moon, including the LM engines, backpack life support systems, navigation systems and docking maneuvers. After launching on March 3, 1969, the crew performed the first crewed flight of a lunar module, the first docking and extraction of the same, one two-person spacewalk (EVA), and the second docking of two crewed spacecraftâ "two months after the Soviets performed a spacewalk crew transfer between Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5. The mission concluded on March 13 and was a complete success. It proved the LM worthy of crewed spaceflight, setting the stage for the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing, Apollo 10, before the ultimate goal, landing on the Moon. As NASA Associate Administrator George Mueller put it, "Apollo 9 was as successful a flight as any of us could ever wish for, as well as being as successful as any of us have ever seen." Gene Kranz called Apollo 9 "sheer exhilaration". Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips stated, "in every way, it has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations." Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stood in Mission Control as Spider and Gumdrop docked after their separate flights, and with the docking, according to Andrew Chaikin, "Apollo 9 had fulfilled all its major objectives. At that moment, Aldrin knew Apollo 10 would also succeed, and that he and Armstrong would attempt to land on the Moon. On March 24, NASA made it official.".
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