FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
The most famous image from the mission was this one – Earthrise– revealing both our planet’s isolation and its fragility
NASA
T’was the night before Christmas in 1968, the end of a traumatic year for the US that had borne witness to political assassinations, student riots and war in the Far East. But, 400,000km away a tiny American spaceship was orbiting the Moon. The cramped cabin of Apollo 8 was occupied by three astronauts who had travelled more than 250 times farther from Earth than any human had before.