S68-49389
8"x10"
$26.80
Sale price
$26.80
Regular price
$40.00
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In S68-49389, taken over two months before the launch of Apollo 8, the spacecraft (atop the Saturn V rocket) is slowly, carefully being transported from the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC) Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to Pad A, Launch Complex 39, a three-mile journey. Over the course of the next two months, the spacecraft would undergo a series of tests, which continued until the day before the launch. Although it was the second crewed mission in the Apollo space program, Apollo 8 produced a series of awe-inspiring firsts, and it helped pave the way for subsequent missions, including the Moon landing. Many challenges faced the crew and its mission: an accelerated schedule, which left the astronauts less time to train and prepare; ruptured fuel lines and bad igniter lines, which were fixed a mere three days before the scheduled launch; and a success rate that the crew themselves thought was only fifty-fifty. Despite all this, the Apollo 8 astronauts became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit; the first to be captured by (and then escape) the gravitational field of another celestial body; the first to see Earth as a whole planet and the first to directly see the far side of the Moon. While orbiting the Moon, the crew also became the first humans to witness (and photograph) Earthrise.
S68-49389
$26.80
Sale price
$26.80
Regular price
$40.00