First Around the Moon, Astronauts Read Genesis to Earth During Orbit

Update 6/8/2024: Astronaut Anders was killed Friday (6/7/2024) when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.

Launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21, 1968, Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, were the first Apollo spacecraft mission to fly to the moon and to see Earth as a distant sphere in space.

“Before we got to the moon, I was able to look back at the Earth,” Anders said years later. “It was about the size of my fist at arm’s length, and you really couldn’t see any details. You couldn’t see the continents even.”

“It was Christmas time, and I thought [Earth] was like a fragile Christmas tree ornament.” He noted. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s too bad that we don’t treat it more like a Christmas tree ornament.’ And then when I was lucky enough to take the iconic Earthrise picture, which basically kicked off Earth Day and that kind of thing.”

“It’s really too bad we’re shooting missiles and rockets at each other on this tiny little place we call home,” Anders continued. “It’s the home in the universe for us, for humans.”

“It’s too bad we don’t treat it a little better.”

“We were in lunar orbit, upside down and going backward,” he explained. “For the first several revolutions, we didn’t see the Earth and didn’t really think about that. Then we righted ourselves, heads up, and twisted the spacecraft so it was going forward. While Frank Borman was in the process of doing that, suddenly I saw out of the corner of my eye this color — it was shocking.”

“We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth,” Anders stated.

The Apollo 8 trio spent three days traveling to the moon, and slipped into lunar orbit on Christmas Eve.

After they circled 10 times on Dec. 24-25, they headed home on Dec. 27.

However, two times while they were orbiting the Moon, the team was able to communicate to mission control back on Earth, and their transmissions were telecast over the radio and television for listeners to hear

So on Christmas Eve, the astronauts read from the Book of Genesis in a live telecast from the orbiter: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Borman ended the broadcast with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

Lovell and Borman had previously flown together during the two-week Gemini 7 mission, which launched on Dec. 4, 1965 — and, at only 120 feet apart, completed the first space orbital rendezvous with Gemini 6.

“Gemini was a tough go,” Borman said in 1998. “It was smaller than the front seat of a Volkswagen bug. It made Apollo seem like a super-duper, plush touring bus.”

Borman died in Billings, Montana on November 7, 2023. He was 95.

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