Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first to reach the Moon, orbit it, and return. Its three-astronaut crew — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — were the first humans to fly to the Moon and witness and photograph an Earthrise. The crew orbited the Moon ten times over the course of twenty hours, during which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis.
About Apollo 8 in brief
Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first to reach the Moon, orbit it, and return. Its three-astronaut crew — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — were the first humans to fly to the Moon and witness and photograph an Earthrise. The crew orbited the Moon ten times over the course of twenty hours, during which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. The 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 spacecraft had three primary components: a command module with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that would return to Earth; a service module with propulsion power, electrical and water; and a two-stage lunar module, which comprised a descent for astronauts to lunar orbit and an ascent stage to return the astronauts to Earth. This crew was unique among the pre-Space Shuttle era missions in that it was not the most experienced member of the Gemini crew: Lovell had flown twice before Gemini VII, and would also be first to be replaced by Jim Lovell after cervical discniation in July 1968. The first human spaceflight from the Kennedy Space Center, located adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, launched on December 21, 1968, and was the second crewed spaceflight mission flown in the United States Apollo space program after Apollo 7, which stayed in Earth orbit.
Apollo 8 was the third flight and theFirst crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket, and it was thefirst human space flight from the Florida spaceport, which is now the site of the Kennedy International Space Station. It took 68 hours to travel the distance to the moon and returned to Earth on December 27, 1968. The crew members were named Time magazine’s \”Men of the Year\” for 1968 upon their return. It was also the first mission to be launched by the Saturn rocket that was then under development by the US Air Force, which was under development at the time of the mission’s launch. The initial assignment of the Apollo 8 crew was to test the Apollo Lunar Module and command module test, to be flown in an elliptical medium Earth orbit in early 1969, but the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious command- module-only lunar orbital flight to be flew in December. This would be the third crewed Apollo flight, officially announced on November 20, 1967, after Gemini VII and Gemini VII. It would be followed by the Apollo XII mission, which would be launched on July 31, 1969, and then the Apollo 13 mission on August 14, 1969. The final mission was the Apollo 11 mission, scheduled for October 31, 1970, and scheduled for November 14, 1970. It followed the successful landing of the first Apollo astronaut, Neil Armstrong.
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This page is based on the article Apollo 8 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
