Neil Armstrong the first manned Moon landing, and spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module. When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. After he resigned from NASA in
Jim Lovell spacecraft, paved the way for the Apollo missions, and helped reach the goal of getting man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Lovell was originally chosen as Command Module pilot (CMP) on the backup crew for Apollo 9 along with Neil Armstrong as commander and Buzz Aldrin as lunar module pilot (LMP). Apollo 9 was planned as a high-apogee Earth orbital test of the Lunar Module (LM). Lovell later replaced Michael Collins as CMP on the Apollo 9 prime crew when Collins needed to have surgery for a bone spur on his spine. This reunited Lovell with