After launching on December 21, 1968, Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first human beings to escape Earth’s gravity and first to see the far side of the Moon. The crew took three days to travel to the Moon, reaching the Moon on Christmas Eve which they orbited ten times, 20 hours in total. The mission was also the first manned launch of the Saturn V Rocket.

One of the crew’s major tasks was reconnaissance of the planned landing sites on the Moon, they also saw the Earth rise and by the end of the mission, the crew would take photographs of the Moon and the Earth.

On Christmas afternoon, the crew had ended their final television broadcast and prepared for the re-entry to Earth. The capsule landed at the USS Yorktown deck on December 27, 1968 before sunrise.

TIME magazine chose the crew of Apollo 8 as their Man of the Year for 1968 recognizing them as the people who most influenced events in the preceding year. Also, they were the first people ever to leave the gravitational influence of the Earth and orbit another celestial body.