eva status birth_place other_names mission nationality article_title birth_date insignia selection image time name type occupation alma_mater
1 1 hour 8 minutes retired neptune township , new jersey , u.s. russell louis schweickart apollo 9 american rusty schweickart
 25 october 1935 40px 1963 nasa group 3 rustyschweickart.jpg 10d 01h 00m russell l. schweickart nasa astronaut research government executive scientist , fighter pilot , business executive , massachusetts 1963 institute of technology , b.s. 1956 , m.s.
rusty schweickart

russell louis `` rusty '' schweickart -lrb- also schweikart ; born october 25 , 1935 -rrb- is an american aeronautical engineer , and a former nasa astronaut , research scientist , u.s. air force fighter pilot , as well as a former business executive and government executive .
selected in 1963 for nasa 's third astronaut group , he is best known as the lunar module pilot on the 1969 apollo 9 mission , the first manned flight test of the lunar module , on which he performed the first in-space test of the portable life support system used by the apollo astronauts who walked on the moon .
as backup commander of the first manned skylab mission in 1973 , he was responsible for developing the hardware and procedures used by the first crew to perform critical in-flight repairs of the skylab station .
after skylab , he served for a time as director of user affairs in nasa 's office of applications .
schweickart left nasa in 1977 to serve for two years as california governor jerry brown 's assistant for science and technology , then was appointed by brown to california 's energy commission for five and a half years , serving as chairman for three .
in 1984 -- 85 he co-founded the association of space explorers and later in 2002 co-founded the b612 foundation , a non-profit organization dedicated to defending earth from asteroid impacts , along with fellow former-astronaut dr. ed lu and two planetary scientists .
he served for a period as its chair before becoming its chair emeritus .
