Apollo 8 in lunar orbit
NASA made its bravest move in December 1968. On the very first manned flight of the Saturn V rocket, NASA sent it to the moon. Previous orbital flights had been in low Earth orbit, "like a fly walking on the surface of an apple." Now Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders became the first humans to leave Earth orbit and fly to the Moon. On December 24th, 1968, they entered lunar orbit and became the first humans to orbit another world.
They were also the first humans to see the whole Earth from space, like a blue and white marble, while viewers back on Earth thrilled to the spectacle of their home planet as a small globe in the blackness of space.
The mission was dangerous. They had no lunar module with them, and were totally dependent on the engine of the service module re-starting when required to. They had to burn that engine behind the moon, out of contact with Earth, and it had to burn for 4 minutes and 7 seconds. Too short a burn might have flung them out into space with no hope of return, and too short a burn might have sent them crashing into the moon. The crew said it was the longest four minutes of their lives.
They emerged at exactly the predicted moment, however, in an orbit between 193.3 and 69.5 miles from the lunar surface. Everything they had experienced thus far had been predicted, but something unexpected happened in lunar orbit. They saw the first "Earthrise" as the Earth rose above the lunar horizon, the only coloured object to be seen. This is not generally seen from the lunar surface because the Earth is always in view, but it can be witnessed from lunar orbit.
They made 10 orbits of the moon, and made the famous Christmas Eve live broadcast to Earth with a reading from the Book of Genesis. It was then the most watched TV broadcast ever, seen by an estimated quarter of the world's population either live or delayed. Borman signed off by saying, "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."
1968 had been a bad year. The Vietnam war was still raging and saw the Tet offensive. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both assassinated. There were race riots in the US, student riots in Paris, and a riot that marred the Democrat Convention in Chicago. Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops and tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to crush its bid for freedom.
At the close of the year the flight of Apollo 8 lifted morale. On its return, Frank Borman received a telegram from a stranger that simply said, "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968."
The most apt comment was perhaps the observation that the most interesting thing that humans saw when they ventured out into space was their own planet, the one they had left. They saw how fragile it looked, how beautiful, and how tiny it was, lost in the vastness of space. It gave humanity a sense of perspective that has stayed with many of us to this day. Everything that has happened since the first life-forms crawled out of the primaeval sea happened on that tiny blue and white marble spinning in the emptiness of the universe around it.