NASA Year End Report 1968, Eastman color?, pink fade, NASA,
“NASA documentary about it’s activities in 1968. The Surveyor program comes to an end, and planetary exploration missions are planned. Pioneer is mentioned, along with the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory. Other projects like the XB-70 are described in some detail. Apollo is underway with Apollos 5 to 8.
22 Jan. 1968 – In Apollo 5, NASA made the first flight test of the propulsion systems of the Lunar Module ascent/descent capability.
11-22 Oct. 1968 – The first piloted flight of the Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 7, and Saturn IB launch vehicle, this flight involved astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, and Walter Cunningham who tested hardware in Earth orbit.
21-27 Dec. 1968 On 21 Dec. 1968, Apollo 8 took off atop a Saturn V booster from the Kennedy Space Center with three astronauts aboard-Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders-for a historic mission to orbit the Moon. At first it was planned as a mission to test Apollo hardware in the relatively safe confines of low Earth orbit, but senior engineer George M. Low of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, Texas (renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973), and Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo Program Manager at NASA headquarters, pressed for approval to make it a circumlunar flight. The advantages of this could be important, both in technical and scientific knowledge gained as well as in a public demonstration of what the U.S. could achieve. In the summer of 1968 Low broached the idea to Phillips, who then carried it to the administrator, and in Nov. the agency reconfigured the mission for a lunar trip. After Apollo 8 made one and a half Earth orbits its third stage began a burn to put the spacecraft on a lunar trajectory. As it traveled outward the crew focused a portable television camera on Earth and for the first time humanity saw its home from afar, a tiny, lovely, and fragile “blue marble” hanging in the blackness of space. When it arrived at the Moon on Christmas Eve this image of Earth was even more strongly reinforced when the crew sent images of the planet back while reading the first part of the Bible-“God created the heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form and void”-before sending Christmas greetings to humanity. The next day they fired the boosters for a return flight and “splashed down” in the Pacific Ocean on 27 Dec. It was an enormously significant accomplishment coming at a time when American society was in crisis over Vietnam, race relations, urban problems, and a host of other difficulties. And if only for a few moments the nation united as one to focus on this epochal event. Two more Apollo missions occurred before the climax of the program, but they did little more than confirm that the time had come for a lunar landing.”
