Title: March 1969
Content: At 11:00 in the morning local time (1600 UTC), the United States launched Apollo 9, with astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Rusty Schweickart, in a test of the Apollo Lunar Module's ability to undock from, and then redock with, the lunar orbiter. Associated Press reporter Paul Recer described the mission as "a flight that will put America on the moon's threshold or slam the door indefinitely". ; The United States Navy established the Navy Fighter Weapons School (profiled in the 1986 film Top Gun at Naval Air Station Miramar. ; Sirhan Sirhan took the witness stand to testify in his own defense at his trial for the murder of Bobby Kennedy, and, in questioning by defense attorney Grant Cooper, answer that he had shot Kennedy and that he recognized incriminating handwriting as his own, but denied that he remembered the shooting. ; Died:  ; Ali Jawdat al-Aiyubi, 82, three-time Prime Minister of Iraq ; Fred Alexander, 88, American tennis player and winner of six Grand Slam doubles events 
Title: Mercury-Atlas 8
Content:  to conduct the first on-orbit docking had been cancelled - and finally commanding the first Apollo mission, Apollo 7, in 1968. He retired from NASA in the summer of 1969, the only astronaut to fly on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. The success of MA-8 made the preparation for MA-9 "considerably easier", though it did cause some observers to suggest the program should be ended abruptly in order to conclude on a clear note of success, rather than risking another—potentially catastrophic—flight. However, this was not a view shared by the NASA planners, who had been pressing for a one-day Mercury mission since mid-1961, when it first began to seem technically 
Title: Mercury-Atlas 8
Content:  Mercury-Atlas 8 (MA-8) was the fifth United States crewed space mission, part of NASA's Mercury program. Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., orbited the Earth six times in the Sigma 7 spacecraft on October 3, 1962, in a nine-hour flight focused mainly on technical evaluation rather than on scientific experimentation. This was the longest U.S. crewed orbital flight yet achieved in the Space Race, though well behind the several-day record set by the Soviet Vostok 3 earlier in the year. It confirmed the Mercury spacecraft's durability ahead of the one-day Mercury-Atlas 9 mission that followed in 1963. Planning began for the third U.S. orbital mission in February 1962, aiming for a six-or-seven-orbit flight to build on the previous three-orbit missions. NASA officially 
Title: Apollo 9
Content:  McDivitt was in the Air Force; selected as a member of the second group of astronauts in 1962, he was command pilot of Gemini 4 (1965). Scott, also Air Force, was selected in the third astronaut group in 1963 and flew alongside Neil Armstrong in Gemini 8, on which the first spacecraft docking was performed. Schweickart, a civilian who had served in the Air Force and Massachusetts Air National Guard, was selected as a Group3 astronaut but was not assigned to a Gemini mission and had no spaceflight experience. The backup crew consisted of Pete Conrad as commander, Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon Jr., and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean. 
Title: Barbara Morgan
Content:  In January 1998, 12 years after McAuliffe's death, Morgan was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate (Mission Specialist) and reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1998 to begin training to become a full-time astronaut. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. She served in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as prime communicator with on-orbit crews. Like many other astronauts and cosmonauts, Morgan is a licensed amateur radio operator, having passed the technician class license exam in 2003. This qualified her to use the facilities of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) project. Morgan's duties as a Mission Specialist were no different 
Title: David Scott
Content:  (Class IV). Scott retired from the Air Force in 1975 with the rank of colonel, and more than 5,600 hours of logged flying time. As an astronaut, Scott made his first flight into space as pilot of the Gemini 8 mission, along with Neil Armstrong, in March 1966, spending just under eleven hours in low Earth orbit. He would have been the second American astronaut to walk in space had Gemini 8 not made an emergency abort. Scott then spent ten days in orbit in March 1969 as Command Module Pilot of Apollo 9, a mission that extensively tested the Apollo spacecraft, along with Commander James McDivitt and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. 
Title: Apollo 8
Content:  Originally planned as the second crewed Apollo Lunar Module and command module test, to be flown in an elliptical medium Earth orbit in early 1969, the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious command-module-only lunar orbital flight to be flown in December, as the lunar module was not yet ready to make its first flight. Astronaut Jim McDivitt's crew, who were training to fly the first lunar module flight in low Earth orbit, became the crew for the Apollo9 mission, and Borman's crew were moved to the Apollo8 mission. This left Borman's crew with two to three months' less training and preparation time than originally planned, and replaced the planned lunar module training with translunar navigation training. Apollo 8 took 
Title: Frank Borman
Content:  to the schedule for a lunar landing in mid-1969. With the change in mission for Apollo 8, Slayton asked McDivitt if he still wanted to fly it. McDivitt turned it down; his crew had spent a great deal of time preparing to test the LM, and that was what he still wanted to do. When Borman was asked the same question, he answered "yes" without any hesitation. Slayton then decided to swap the crews and spacecraft of the Apollo8 and9 missions. Apollo8 was launched at 12:51:00 UTC (07:51:00 Eastern Standard Time) on December 21, 1968. On the second day Borman awoke feeling 
Title: Buzz Aldrin
Content:  Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, and, as Lunar Module Eagle pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, he and mission commander Neil Armstrong were the first two people to land on the Moon. He is the last surviving crew member of Apollo 11. Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Aldrin graduated third in the class of 1951 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was commissioned 
Title: March 1969
Content:  by Apollo mission astronauts on the Moon was successfully tested in the vacuum of outer space for the first time. Apollo 9 astronaut Russell L. Schweickart donned the cumbersome pressurized garment (with a greater than previously-required oxygen supply and more powerful radio equipment) and performed a spacewalk for 37 minutes, proving that the suit would be effective for the Apollo 11 astronauts to wear for an extended period on the Moon. ; Born:  Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Indian-born Tibetan poet, "on a train halfway between Delhi and Chandigarh" ; Died:  ; Óscar Osorio, 58, former President of El Salvador ; Keisai Aoki, 75, Japanese Okinawan missionary 

Question: Verify the following claims with "True" or "False": An astronaut retired on the 1st of September 1969, was a member of the Apollo 8 crew and in 1962 received an M.S. from his alma Mater, AFIT.
Answer: True