History: December 2018 Archives

A half-century ago, three American astronauts became the first humans to orbit the moon. On Christmas eve, during a global broadcast estimated to have been heard by a quarter of the Earth's population, the crew of Apollo 8 -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders -- read from the first chapter of Genesis, the Bible's account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.

In this short video that includes the famous broadcast from lunar orbit, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine puts the achievement of Apollo 8 into the context of the space race with the USSR and the recent Apollo 1 disaster and the problems with the launch of Apollo 6, the final unmanned Saturn V test.