Apollo 8 made the historic live broadcast to Earth from lunar - TopicsExpress



          

Apollo 8 made the historic live broadcast to Earth from lunar orbit on Christmas eve in 1968. The video images were grainy and in black & white. Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to actually leave Earth orbit to go to the Moon. There was no Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) on board and there was no landing - that would wait until Apollo 11. Apollo 8 was not originally planned to go to the Moon but some intelligence reports indicated the Russians were close to launching a manned lunar mission of some sort - maybe a landing - so NASA responded by advancing a translunar mission even though the LEM was not ready. It was not known for some years but the russian lunar rocket blew up shortly after liftoff. Russia was effectively put out of the race to the Moon. The Apollo spacecraft went into lunar orbit for a while and then returned to Earth. They returned with several film cartridges. One included this pic.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:41:47 +0000

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