Apollo 8

Apollo 8 was the second manned mission of the Apollo space program that was launched. Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first humans to travel beyond Earth orbit and into an orbit around the Moon. It was also the first manned launch of the Saturn V rocket.

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NASA prepared for the mission in only four months. The hardware involved had only been used a few times—the Saturn V had only launched twice before, and the Apollo spacecraft had only just finished its first manned mission, Apollo 7. However the success of the mission paved the way for the successful completion of John F. Kennedy's goal of landing on the Moon before the end of the decade.

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After launching on December 21, 1968, the crew took three days to travel to the Moon, which they orbited for twenty hours. While in lunar orbit they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast that is thought to be one of the most watched of all time.

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Manned mission: A manned mission is usually in reference to launching a human into orbit or to astronomical destinations, such as planetary bodies or other star systems. Humans have so far only traveled to the moon under the United States' NASA, though the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China have both ...

Apollo space program: REDIRECT Apollo program...

Frank Borman: Frank Borman (born March 14, 1928) was a NASA astronaut, best remembered as one of the three crewmembers of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon....

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