Apollo 8 8 are the names of the three astronauts. The initial design of the insignia was developed by Jim Lovell, who reportedly sketched it while riding in the back seat of a T-38 flight from California to Houston shortly after learning of the Apollo 8's re-designation as a lunar-orbital mission. The crew wanted to name their spacecraft, but NASA did not allow it. The crew would have likely chosen "Columbiad", the name of the giant cannon that launches a space vehicle in Jules Verne's 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon". The Apollo 11 CM was named "Columbia" in part
Apollo 9 October 23, 1981. The descent stage of LM-3 "Spider" (1969-018D) reentered on March 22, 1969. The upper stage of the Apollo 9 Saturn V, S-IVB-504N, (1969-018B) remains in heliocentric (solar) orbit . NASA reports Multimedia Apollo 9 Apollo 9 was the third crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program and the first flight of the command and service module (CSM) with the lunar module (LM, pronounced "lem"). Its three-person crew consisted of Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. The crew spent ten days in low Earth orbit testing several aspects