Apollo 15 to Apollo 12, and since Apollo 11's backup crew had been designated for Apollo 13 (which did not land on the Moon), they were the first Apollo crew for a successful lunar landing mission to have backed up another such mission. Having had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Apollo spacecraft, they could devote more of their training time as prime crew for Apollo 15 to geology and sampling techniques. The astronauts at NASA who were scientists, such as geologist Harrison Schmitt, pushed though the early Apollo missions for a greater place for science as part of the mission,
Apollo–Soyuz Test Project Command/Service Module (CSM) with a Soviet Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft. Although the Soyuz was given a mission designation number (Soyuz 19) as part of the ongoing Soyuz program, its radio call sign was simply "Soyuz" for the duration of the joint mission. The Apollo mission was not a numbered mission of the Apollo program, and similarly bore the call sign "Apollo". Despite this, some of the press and a few NASA web pages have referred to the mission as "Apollo 18", but this should not be confused with the canceled lunar mission. The Apollo spacecraft was launched with a docking module