CHAPTER ONE Earthrise On Christmas Eve 1968 three astronauts floated freely in their cone-shaped spacecraft Commander Frank Borman lunar module pilot William Anders and command module pilot James Lovell could see the gray pockmarked face of the moon below them Their mission Apollo 8 was tasked with orbiting 70 miles 110 km from the lunar surface It was one step in a long process of testing and proving the gear and procedures that would eventually land humans on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission But for now the Apollo 8 astronauts simply gazed down at the moon as they circled it As they rounded the edge of the moon on their fourth orbit an incredible sight caught their eyes Rising from behind the The Apollo 8 crew left to right James Lovell William A Anders and Frank Borman were the first people to orbit the moon
Earth is shown tipped on its side in the Earthrise photo Antarctica is the white area to the left the sunlight boundary crosses Africa lunar horizon was a brilliant blue-and-white marble Earth The cabin of the spacecraft filled with excited voices as the astronauts scrambled to grab their cameras Borman exclaimed Oh my God Look at that picture over there Here’s the Earth coming up Wow that is pretty With Earth rising quickly Borman and Anders asked Lovell to pass them rolls of color film Lovell caught a view of his home planet too saying Oh man that’s great Take several of them He reached for another
camera and began snapping away One of Anders’s shots would become one of history’s most famous photos Earthrise Borman later remembered how he felt the instant he saw the incredible sight out the window of the spacecraft I happened to glance out of one of the still-clear windows just at the moment the Earth appeared over the lunar horizon It was the most beautiful heart-catching sight of my life one that sent a torrent of nostalgia of sheer homesickness surging through me It was the only thing in space that had any color to it Everything else was either black or white but not the Earth Three days later the command module streaked into Earth’s atmosphere at more than 24,000 miles per hour 38,600 kmh After shedding most of this speed through air resistance during its descent it parachuted to a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean The aircraft CAMERA EQUIPMENT ON APOLLO 8 The Apollo 8 mission carried two Hasselblad EL cameras These models were outfitted with electric motors that automatically wound the film to the next frame after a shot saving the astronauts valuable time The astronauts had three lenses for the cameras two regular lenses and one telephoto lens that could take close-up photos of distant objects Also included were seven magazines or self-contained rolls of film Three were black-and-white film and four were color The color magazines could shoot 160 photos each and the black-and-white ones could shoot 200
