Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day we feature a different image or photograph
of our fascinating universe, along with a brief explanation written by a
December 25, 1995
Apollo 8 Crew
During the 1968 Christmas season
Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders flew the
Apollo 8 command module
From the Earth to the Moon
and back (launched Dec. 21, achieved 10 lunar orbits, landed Dec. 27).
The Apollo 8
mission's impressive list of firsts includes;
the first manned flight using the Saturn V rocket,
the first humans to journey to the Earth's Moon,
the first to photograph the Earth from deep space.
The famous picture above, showing the Earth rising above the
Moon's limb as seen from lunar orbit, was a marvelous gift to the world.
This was astronaut James Lovell's third mission. His last flight would be
as commander of Apollo 13.
Tomorrow's picture: Accretion Disk Binary System
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