America on the Move
Crew of Apollo 8 - A View from Lunar Orbit, 1968
On December 21, 1968, the three-man crew aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft—Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders—lifted off from Cape Kennedy and began a journey that would take them farther away from Earth than anyone had ever gone. Their mission was a crucial step in the Government’s program to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. They were to travel some 240,000 miles from Earth, enter lunar orbit, scout for appropriate landing sites, and prepare the way for future lunar-landing missions.
The flight plan called for the crew to broadcast a public message from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve. The audience was half a billion people around the world. After describing the desolation and bleakness of the lunar landscape, the astronauts read from an ancient text they had brought with them: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” Anders began. Each of the three astronauts read in succession the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis, with Frank Borman, commander of the mission, concluding the broadcast, “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.”
Transcript of audiotapes of the Apollo 8 telecast, December 24, 1968, page 274/1
National Archives, Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Excerpt:
Frank Borman: The moon is a different thing to each one of us. I think that each one of us—each one carries his own impression of what he’s seen today. I know my own impression is that it’s a vast, lonely forbidding type existence, great expanse of nothing, that looks rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone, and it certainly would not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.
—Frank Borman, crew member of the Apollo 8 spacecraft
An excerpt from the original recorded media is available in the Flash version of this exhibit.
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Transcript of audiotapes of the Apollo 8 telecast, December 24, 1968, page 274/2
National Archives, Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Excerpt:
Jim Lovell: The vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand [oasis] to the big vastness of space.
—Jim Lovell, crew member of the Apollo 8 spacecraft
An excerpt from the original recorded media is available in the Flash version of this exhibit.
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Transcript of audiotapes of the Apollo 8 telecast, December 24, 1968, page 277/1
National Archives, Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Excerpt:
An excerpt from the original recorded media is available in the Flash version of this exhibit.
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Earthrise, photograph, by Bill Anders, 1968
The crew of Apollo 8 was armed with still and movie cameras to photograph the Moon; but the most enduring image of their mission is this photograph of their own home, planet Earth.
According to Anders, the astronauts saw the horizon vertically—not horizontally—with the lunar surface to the right.
National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency [306-PSD-68-4049c]
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Apollo 8 crewmembers, left to right: James A. Lovell, Jr., William A. Anders, and Frank Borman, November 22, 1968
Courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC
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Apollo 8 Moon view, 1968
National Archives, Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [255-CB-69-H-19]
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