The LM Spider, first manned spacecraft designed for another world, making his first spaceflight over the Earth, 3-13 March 1969

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1969, with NASA (MSC) caption numbered "AS9-21-3181"and "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 20,3 x 25,4 cm

A rare photograph of the LM Spider, the first vehicle intended solely for use in space and on the airless Moon but not able to land on Earth.

[NASA caption] APOLLO 9 LM VIEWED FROM CSM - Excellent view of the Apollo 9 Lunar Module, in a lunar landing configuration, as photographed from the Command/Service Module on the fifth day of the Apollo 9 earth-orbital mission. The landing gear on the Lunar Module "Spider" has been deployed. Note Lunar Module's upper hatch and docking tunnel. Inside the "Spider" were Astronauts James A. McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander; and Russell L. Schweickart, lunar module pilot. Astronaut David R. Scott, command module pilot, remained at the controls in the Command Module "Gumdrop" while the other two astronauts checked out the Lunar Module.

Apollo 9 was the first manned spaceflight of the Lunar Module.
Photographed by David Scott from the Command Module Gumdrop, the LM Spider, piloted by Schweickart and McDivitt in lunar landing configuration, has its landing gear deployed and its surface sensors extending from the footpads.
Spider was built of wafer-thin metal: the “ugly bug” as it was often called was so frail that its flanks would crumple if subjected to flight in Earth’s lower atmosphere. (Mason, p. 152)
It was the first time astronauts were flying in a spacecraft not designed to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere; consequently redocking with the CSM Gumdrop was essential.

Attempting to describe the cool courage of McDivitt and Schweickart when they went off for the first time over the horizon in the unlandable LM, some observers declared it “the bravest act since man first ate a raw oyster.” (NASA SP-350, p. 194)