Russell L. Schweickart

Russell L. Schweickart was a NASA astronaut who served as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 9 in 1969, a critical Earth-orbit test of the Lunar Module and the self-contained backpack that would let astronauts leave their spacecraft on the Moon. His spacewalk from the Lunar Module's porch was the first crewed test of the same portable life-support system Apollo 11 astronauts would depend on to walk on the lunar surface months later. Schweickart later co-founded the Association of Space Explorers and the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impacts.