Apollo 8

Apollo 8, the second manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968 and became the first manned space craft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's Moon,orbit it and return safely to Earth. The three-astronaut crew — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — became the first humans to travelbeyond low Earth orbit, the first to see Earth as a whole planet, and then the first to directly see the far side of the Moon.
Apollo 8 took three days to travel to the Moon. It orbited ten times overthe course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast, in which they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the mostwatched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their space craft splashed down in the Northern Pacific Ocean.
On Christmas afternoon, the crew made their fifth television broadcast. This timethey gave a tour of the spacecraft, showing how an astronaut lived in space. When they finished broadcasting they found a small present from Deke Slayton in the food locker: a real turkey dinner withstuffing, in the same kind of pack that the troops in Vietnam received. Another Slayton surprise was a gift of three miniature bottles of brandy, that Borman ordered the crew to leave alone until afterthey landed; and they remained unopened, even years after the flight. There were also small presents to the crew from their wives. The next day, at about 124 hours into the mission, the sixth andfinal TV transmission showed the mission's best video images of the earth, in a short four minute broadcast.

Position | Astronaut |
Commander | Frank F. Borman, II
Second and last spaceflight |...