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December 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, the
first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, orbit the Moon, and
return. On the first crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket, Frank
Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders took 68 hours to reach the Moon.
Apollo 8 orbited the Moon ten times over the course of twenty hours,
and their Christmas Eve live television broadcast which was the most
watched TV program ever at the time. The image above shows the third
stage of the Saturn V rocket separating from the Command and Service
Module (CSM). More details of the mission, and the role of the
Honeysuckle Creek tracking station, are available from
the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station website, maintained by Colin
Mackellar. (Image credit: Johnson Space Center scan courtesy of
apolloarchive.com)
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