James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, died in Tucson. He was 93.
James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, has died. He was 93.
Flying with Apollo 9 crewmates Rusty Schweickart and David Scott, McDivitt’s mission was the first in-space test of the lightweight lunar lander, nicknamed Spider. Their goal was to see if people could live in it, if it could dock in orbit and — something that became crucial in the Apollo 13 crisis — if the lunar module’s engines could control the stack of spacecraft, which included the command module Gumdrop.
Unlike many of his fellow astronauts, McDivitt didn’t yearn to fly from childhood. He was just good at it.. He worked for a year before going to junior college. When he joined the Air Force at 20, soon after the Korean War broke out, he had never been on an airplane. He was accepted for pilot training before he had ever been off the ground.
Apollo 9’s shakedown flight lasted 10 days in March 1969 — four months before the moon landing — and was relatively trouble free and uneventful.
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Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93McDivitt's Apollo mission came in 1969, four months before the moon landing. Apollo 9 orbited Earth to test the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon.
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Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, has died. He was 93.
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Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93The NASA astronaut who commanded the Apollo 9 mission has died
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NASA Astronaut James McDivitt, Commander of 1969 Apollo 9 Mission, Dies at 93Unlike many of his fellow astronauts, James McDivitt didn’t yearn to fly from childhood. He was just good at it.
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