Apollo 8

Date: December 24, 1968

Apollo 8 was the first mission out of a series of American space mission in which humans were successfully sent to the moon in a spacecraft and back to Earth. It was the first manned flight into lunar orbit. It was also the first human spacecraft to leave the Earth’s orbit, be captured in another celestial body’s orbit, and then escape it afterwards. The crew on Apollo 8 was Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders. They were the first humans to be able to see the far side of the Moon, something that was only viewable through images from satellites.

“The mission objectives for Apollo 8 included a coordinated performance of the crew, the command and service module, or CSM, and the support facilities. The mission also was to demonstrate translunar injection; CSM navigation, communications and midcourse corrections; consumable assessment; and passive thermal control. The detailed test objectives were to refine the systems and procedures relating to future lunar operations” (NASA.gov). The mission had a lot of success  with most other objectives, and new experiments done yielded new information as well.

While the spacecraft was in motion, several live television broadcasts were done from the Apollo. They were transmitted throughout the entire world, and showed the different stages in which the astronauts were traveling in. These would show different parts of the Earth of and the Moon as time went by.

When the spacecraft reentered, “…its velocity was 24,696 mph, with heatshield temperatures reaching 5,000 degrees F. Parachute deployment and other re-entry events were nominal. Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 10:51 a.m. EST Dec. 27….147 hours after launch and precisely on time. According to prior planning, helicopters and aircraft hovered over the spacecraft,…The Apollo 8 crew reached the recovery ship at 12:20 p.m.” (NASA.gov).