December 24, 1968

Apollo 8

Apollo 8 becomes the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon

The engine burn that decided whether Apollo 8 would orbit the Moon happened where Earth could neither see nor hear the spacecraft.

24 December 1968: the burn behind the Moon

At 68 hours, 58 minutes and 45 seconds after launch, Apollo 8 passed behind the Moon on 24 December 1968 and lost radio contact — making Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders the first humans to see the lunar far side directly. Out of contact with Mission Control, they fired the service-propulsion engine for lunar-orbit insertion, a burn lasting just over four minutes.

Mission Control learned the burn had worked only when the spacecraft's signal returned after 32 minutes and 37 seconds of silence. The first crewed spacecraft to orbit another world settled into an initial orbit of roughly 70 by 193 miles, circularized on a later burn.

Earthrise, twice

During the fourth orbit, Anders saw Earth rising over the lunar limb. He photographed it first in black and white, then urgently asked Lovell for color film — producing the celebrated color Earthrise photographs.

The image was a first with a footnote: the uncrewed Lunar Orbiter 1 had photographed Earth from lunar distance in 1966. Apollo 8's was the first Earthrise witnessed by human eyes — and the rise itself appeared because the spacecraft was moving around the limb, not because the Moon rotated beneath it.

Genesis from lunar orbit

During a 27-minute Christmas Eve television broadcast, the three astronauts showed viewers the lunar surface and took turns reading the first ten verses of Genesis. The often-quoted 'nearly one billion' audience traces to a later TV Guide estimate, not a measured count.

In all, the crew spent 20 hours and 11 minutes in lunar orbit, completing ten revolutions — with about 45 minutes of radio blackout in each two-hour orbit — before beginning the journey home early on 25 December.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

NASA sources differ by seconds in reconstructed timing: the contemporary mission report gives lunar-orbit insertion at approximately 69:08:20 mission elapsed time, while NASA's later mission-details page gives ignition at 69:08:52. This does not affect the date or event identification.
Audience estimates for the Christmas Eve broadcast vary and were not measured with modern global ratings methods. NASA's chronology attributes the often-repeated “nearly one billion” claim to a later TV Guide estimate, so it should not be presented as an exact verified audience.
Earthrise had been photographed robotically by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966. Apollo 8 produced the first human-witnessed Earthrise and Anders's famous color photograph.