While reading the recent discussion concerning wither man landed on the moon, I realized that today is the anniversary of one of the most historical space missions.
On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 was launched from the Kenndey Space Center in Florida. At the time, this mission was considered the most hazardous and most daring space flight to date. Although it has been overshadowed in the history books by Apollo 11 (and even Apollo 13), without the successiful flight of Apollo 8-it is unlikely that the American's would have ever landed on the moon.
Apollo 8 was somewhat of a unique mission in that it wasn't originally planned for in the Apollo program layout. But, in mid 1968, the Soviets sent an unmanned probe around the moon and back. It was at this time, NASA decided to create a new mission and place the next crew on it. Their mission was a manned lunar orbital flight.
So, the crew of Apollo 8 flew a highly successiful mission in which they flew to the moon, orbited 10 times, and safely returned. This was the first time that the giant Saturn V rocket had been manned (and many felt it was not ready), the first time a manned mission had broken out of Earth orbit, and the first time human eyes had seen the moon close up.
Other than simply leaving Earth orbit, the big fear for this mission was having the crew trapped in lunar orbit. At this time, the Lunar Module was not ready to fly so Apollo 8 did not take one. Therefore, the spacecraft only had one engine to return them to Earth. Although this would be true for every landing mission (after the crew had returned from the surface that is) it had never been done before.
But, on December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 landed safely back on Earth after a very successiful flight. Not long later, the crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (later the CDR of Apollo 13) and Bill Anders were named Time's Men of the Year.
Today, probably the most famous part of this mission is simply this photograph taken while in lunar orbit.
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