© Mark Ollig
Three American astronauts, seated in the command module of a Saturn V rocket, blasted off from Cape Kennedy, FL., Dec. 21,1968.
Apollo 8 was initially planned to conduct the first crewed tests of the Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft, which would land on the moon before the decade’s end.
However, due to delays in getting the LM ready in time for Apollo 8’s scheduled December liftoff, NASA announced Aug. 19, 1968, that it was canceling the LM from the mission.
Instead, Apollo 8’s mission became the first crew traveling to and orbiting the moon.
Saturday morning, Dec. 21, 1968, in my hometown of Winsted, I was sitting in front of the living room television watching the countdown of the tall Saturn V rocket sitting on Launch Complex Pad 39A.
In Florida, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite broadcast from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral).
“T minus ten, nine, we have ignition sequence start. The engines are armed. Four, three, two, one, zero. We have commit,” NASA’s launch commentator Jack King informed the millions of people watching the launch.
The Saturn V rocket’s five F-1 engines clustered on the bottom of the first stage roared to life as they released massive red plumes of flames and white smoke.
At 6:50 a.m., CST, King reported, “We have liftoff,” while I watched the column of red flames and smoke continuing to shoot out of the first stage of the rocket as it slowly began its ascent into a blue Florida sky.
The 6.2-million-pound Saturn V was propelled upward utilizing 7.6 million pounds of thrust generated by those F-1 engines.
“It looks good! Oh, there’s the rumbling in our building!” exclaimed Walter Cronkite, describing the launch while looking through his binoculars.
“One minute, 15 seconds and we’re a little more than half a mile into the sky, and we’re nearly four miles downrange,” reported Paul Haney of NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, TX.
The crew aboard the Apollo 8 command module includes commander Frank Borman, command module pilot James Lovell and lunar module pilot Bill Anders (his title even though no LM was attached).
This flight was risky. Without the Lunar Module, there would be no “lifeboat” available to use in the event of an engine or environmental failure aboard the Command Module.
The LM served as a lifeboat during the Apollo 13 mission.
After Apollo 8 attained Earth orbit, for the next two hours, the astronauts checked the systems of the command and service module to make sure everything was ready for their journey to the moon.
At two hours and 27 minutes into the flight, Mission Control radioed the crew with, “Apollo 8. You are go for TLI. Over.”
TLI means Trans Lunar Injection and is an engine-firing maneuver that would take Apollo 8 out of Earth-orbit and propel it toward the moon.
“Roger. We understand; we are go for TLI,” commander Borman responded.
Apollo 8 would go farther from Earth than any previously crewed flight, which was 850 miles during the Gemini XI mission in 1966.
Apollo 8 was 234,474 miles from Earth on Dec. 24, 1968, and was under the moon’s gravitational influence.
They fired the large SPS (Service Propulsion System) main engine on the service module to slow them down and place them into lunar orbit.
According to the NASA logs, Apollo 8 obtained lunar orbit at 69 hours, 12 minutes, 30 seconds into the mission.
Apollo 8 orbited the moon at the height of 60 nautical miles.
“Apollo 8, Houston. What does the ol’ moon look like from 60 miles? Over,” radioed Mission Control.
“Okay, Houston. The moon is essentially grey, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish beach sand. We can see quite a bit of detail,” astronaut Jim Lovell reported.
Apollo 8 would orbit the moon 10 times.
The crew took photographs of specific locations for future Apollo mission landing sites.
For me, two memorable moments stand out during those 10 orbits.
The first was seeing “Earthrise” from the moon, which became a much-published photograph and a postage stamp.
Astronaut Bill Anders took the photo Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, showing Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface.
The second occurred during the ninth orbit around the moon.
Anders radioed Mission Control, “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.”
The astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis.
They closed with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth,” said commander Borman.
You can hear Apollo 8’s live Christmas Eve message from the moon: https://bit.ly/30K1Mig.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
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| "Earthrise" Photo taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. |
