APOLLO 8 Modern doc
Page 16
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
That’s good news on the computer numbers. I hope they’re as accurate with the corridor as they were with the lunar orbit insertion. That was beautiful!
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Houston just told me they have a gorgeous Moon down there. I told them we have a beautiful Earth up here. They replied, “Depends on your point of view.”… It certainly does… It certainly does.
Paul Haney @PHPublicAffairsNASA
We’re inside 10 minutes to next loss of signal now. All systems on board the spacecraft remain GO.
Milton Windler @MWFlightApollo8
The next major event in the scheduled flight plan is the Christmas Eve broadcast from the Moon. We expect this to be quite a show. The prime Earth station for the broadcast will be Goldstone Station in California.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
During the telecast, I think we should each talk about the one thing that impressed us the most about the Moon and describe what we saw.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We’ve got about 15 minutes to get set up for the TV show. We don’t want to screw this up. It needs to be done right. We’ll point the camera at the terminator and talk about what we are seeing.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Then, Bill will read the first four of the Genesis verses, Jim will read the next two and I’ll read the last two. Then we’ll say goodnight.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I don’t want to complicate it any more than that since we’ve got this high gain antenna problem and everything. But we have to send this down right because there will likely be more people listening to this than ever listened to anything in history.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We need to store all the cameras, store everything, because this burn will be a bang. We only need the stuff out here that we need to operate with for the burn. Right now, there are cameras floating all over the place.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Houston wants us to drag out the telecast a little longer, but we are agreed that we’ll cut off transmission at the time we feel is most suitable.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Frank just told me AOS (acquisition of signal) should be anytime now as we are coming around. If we could yaw up 30 degrees, I think we might be able to pick up the Earth coming over the hill.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We need to yaw to the right and maybe pitch up a little bit.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Gee. I don’t see the Earth anywhere out there. Frank needs to pitch up and/or yaw right a little more. Anyway, I don’t think we’ve has AOS yet.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Here it comes! Here comes the Earth, coming up over the lunar horizon. It’s beautiful! We just need to keep the camera steady on it now.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Spacecraft is rolling and we’re keeping a close watch on gimbal lock. We’re over at 45 degrees right now. Still rolling, still yawing. Hard to keep the camera pointing at the rising Earth.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Houston should now be seeing a live TV picture of the Earth taken over the lunar horizon.
Milton Windler @MWFlightApollo8
We are getting the TV transmission from Apollo 8. We have a reasonable picture now.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We’re going to follow the track until the terminator, where we will turn the spacecraft and give them a view of the long-shadowed terrain at the line of shadow. That should come in quite well on the TV.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Oh, we’ve lost the Earth now. We’re switching to the other window and pitching down a little.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We are showing the people on Earth pictures of the Moon that we have been flying over at an altitude of 60 miles for the past 16 hours.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We have spent our Christmas Eve up here doing experiments, measurements, taking pictures and firing our spacecraft engines to maneuver around.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We are now going to follow the trail we have been following all day and show the people on Earth a lunar sunset.
85 hours 45 minutes mission time
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
The Moon is a different thing to each one of us. My own impression is that it is a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse. It looks rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stones. Not a very inviting place to live or work.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
My thoughts are similar to Frank’s. The vast loneliness up here of the Moon is quite awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
The Earth from here is a grand and beautiful oasis in the vastness of space.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
I think what impress me the most are the lunar sunrises and sunsets. Those in particular bring out the stark nature of the terrain.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The long shadows during sunrises and sunsets really bring out the relief that is hard to see down on the very bright surface we are passing over right now.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We are now coming up on Smyth’s Sea, a small mare region covered with a dark material. There is a small, bright impact crater on the edge towards us, and a mountain range on the other side.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
I thought those mountains might be the Pyrenees, but perhaps not. As we cross Smyth’s Sea, we should clearly see the craters Kastner and Gilbert.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
There’s a very bright impact crater coming up right now.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
What we have noticed especially are features you cannot see from Earth, especially the small, bright impact craters that dominate the lunar surface.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The sky is pitch black. The Moon is quite light, and the contrast between the sky and the Moon is a vivid dark line. Coming into view now are some interesting, old double-ring craters that are quite common in the mare region and have been filled with some dark material.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
After the Sea of Fertility first, we’re going over the Sea of Crises. And there’s the Foaming Sea and more mountains coming up.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The mountains coming up now are heavily impacted with numerous craters. You can see central peaks in many of the larger craters.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The sky up here is a rather foreboding expanse of blackness, with no stars visible when we are flying over the Moon in daylight.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We can see by the numerous craters, that the Moon has been bombarded through the eons by countless small asteroids and meteoroids, pockmarking the surface over every square inch.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
One of the most amazing features of the lunar surface is the roundness of most of the craters. It seems that most of them have a round, mound-type appearance rather than sharp, jagged rocks.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Only the very newest features have any sharp definition to them. It seems that they have eventually been eroded down by the constant bombardment of small meteorites.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We have two very large craters coming up on the right. I don’t know which ones they are.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
Those two craters might be Kastner and Gilbert, but I’m not too sure. I can’t see out.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
It’s hard to get me and the TV camera in the window at the same time. The very bright features we see are the new impact craters. The longer a crater has been on the surface of the Moon, the more mottled and subdued it seems to have be
come.
Paul Haney @PHPublicAffairsNASA
We have lost voice from Apollo 8. The picture is still reasonable however.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We are now coming up towards the terminator. I hope soon we’ll be able to show the varying contrasts of light as we pass into the darkness.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Now we are approaching a series of small impact craters. There is a dark area between us and them which could possibly be an old lava flow.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The Sun’s reflection right now makes it hard to distinguish the features we see on the surface and I suppose it’s even harder with the blurry TV pictures we are sending down. It should get better as we approach the terminator.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Another small impact crater is in front of us now. The spacecraft is facing north from our track and we are going sideways to our left.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Checking the maps, if we are under Smyth’s Sea right now, that crater should be Condorcet Crater.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The large dark crater between the spacecraft and the Sea of Crises, we believe, is Condorcet Crater. The Sea of Crises is amazingly smooth as far as the horizon, past this rather rough mountainous region in front of the spacecraft.
Paul Haney @PHPublicAffairsNASA
Apollo 8 is getting a lot of reflection off the window right now. Hard to make out any detail at all from the TV pictures down here.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
I’m going to switch windows to see if we can improve the pictures. I asked Jim not to pitch up but to roll. Roll right and yaw left.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Okay, we can see Picard now.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We’re getting a lot of static on the comms right now. Hope they can still hear us. We can see the dark crater Picard in the middle of the Sea of Crises.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We are now approaching the Moon sunrise (or spacecraft sunset).
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We need to yaw a little more to the left. Over the Sea of Fertility now. It has a mottled look to it, but it is not heavily cratered, so it must be relatively new. It has a strange circular crack pattern around the middle of it.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Looking at the crater Taruntius now. I’d guess it’s about 30 or 40 miles across. We need to roll left right now.
Jim Lovell @CMPApollo8
Just to the west of the Sea of Crises, we see an area called the Marsh of Sleep. And to the west of that, the Sea of Tranquility – the proposed landing site for the Apollo 11 mission.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We’re yawing a bit too far left. We need to yaw right a little bit.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We should start reading the Christmas message soon now we are approaching Earthrise. That would be the best place to read it, approaching the rising Earth.
3 days 13 hours 57 minutes mission time
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
The Apollo 8 astronauts are now able to film the surface of the Moon through the two so-called rendezvous windows, one on each side of the spacecraft. However, the last pictures didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Unlike the high-quality still photos taken by Apollo 8 and developed later on Earth, the live black and white TV pictures of the lunar surface were grainy and lacked definition
Capsule Communicator @CAPCOMApollo8
Apollo 8 is getting a lot of reflection off the window right now. Hard to make out any detail at all from the TV pictures down here.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
I’m going to switch windows to see if we can improve the pictures. I asked Jim not to pitch up but to roll. Roll right and yaw left.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Hopefully, the TV pictures are better now. The large dark crater between the spacecraft and the Sea of Crises, we believe, is Condorcet Crater.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The Sea of Crises is amazingly smooth as far as the horizon, past a rather rough mountainous region in front of the spacecraft.
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
The Apollo 8 astronauts are looking up towards the Sea of Crisis. That so-called ‘sea’ is a large dark flat area between the heavily bombarded surrounding areas.
The Sea of Crises
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Okay we can see the crater Picard now.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We’re getting a lot of static on the comms right now. Hope they can still hear us. We can see the dark crater Picard towards the middle of the Sea of Crises.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We need to yaw a little more to the left. We’re over the Sea of Fertility now. It has a mottled look to it, but it is not heavily cratered, so it must be relatively new. It has a strange circular crack pattern around the middle of it.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Looking at the crater Taruntius now. I’d guess it’s about 30 or 40 miles across. We need to roll left.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
Just to the west of the Sea of Crises, we see an area called the Marsh of Sleep. And to the west of that, the Sea of Tranquility – the proposed landing site for the Apollo 11 mission.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We’re yawing a bit too far left. We need to yaw right a little bit.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Okay, we’re going over the landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. This smooth area was selected so as to make it easy for the initial landing attempt to preclude having to dodge mountains.
Approaching the Sea of Tranquility
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We will start reading the Christmas message now that we are approaching Earthrise. This is the best place and time to read it, coming up again on the rising Earth. I’ve told Bill to go ahead with the reading.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
As we near the point where the Earth will appear above the lunar horizon, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to all of you.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
And God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
And God made the firmament in the midst of the waters and divided the waters which were under the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
And God called the firmament ‘Heaven’. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
And God said, “Let the might of the waters under Heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And the dry land he called ‘Earth’, and the gathering together of the waters he called ‘seas’.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
And God saw that it was good.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with “Goodnight! Good luck! A Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you… all of you on the good Earth!”
Earthrise over the lunar horizon
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
Quite a moving and historic mome
nt we have just witnessed there as we heard first Bill Anders, then Jim Lovell and finally Frank Borman reading from the Book of Genesis.
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
And then, the moving final words: “God bless all of you… all of you on the good Earth!”
Milton Windler @MWFlightApollo8
That was a geological and Biblical lesson from the Moon that I’m sure none of us will ever forget.
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
The astronauts will now continue around the far side of the Moon as we view it from Earth. They will go around just one more time.
Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews
Then, shortly after one o’clock this morning, they will fire the engine that will, if all goes well, return them to Earth… the good Earth.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Okay, camera is OFF. How can you beat that? Jeez, we just went into the terminator and read out the Christmas message right in time! Perfect! Just hope they got all that back on Earth.