Word: crews
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Christmas Eve the crew got busy. Settling Apollo 8 into orbit around the moon was a high-wire maneuver that involved turning the ship backward and firing its powerful service propulsion engine for precisely four and a half minutes - an eternity in a business in which barely a breath from a thruster is enough to set a ship spinning off course. The engine burn was designed to slow the spacecraft down just enough to ease it into a lunar orbit without losing so much altitude that it crashed into the moon instead. Orbital mechanics also demanded that the maneuver occur...
...code for "Are you sure?" Lovell hit the Proceed button. The engine lit and the burn worked exactly as scripted, inserting Apollo 8 into an initial lunar orbit 169.1 miles high at its peak and just 60.5 miles above the lunar craters at its nadir. Even before the crew re-emerged around the other side of the moon and back into radio contact with Houston, Anders snapped what is surely the most iconic photo of the space age and one of the most iconic of any age: Earthrise over the lunar surface...
...Lovell and Anders had been instructed to do whatever they felt was appropriate to mark the moment. A friend of Borman's had suggested they read from the book of Genesis, and so its first 10 verses had been typed up on a piece of fireproof paper before the crew left Earth. They took turns reading aloud...
When they finished, Borman, as the skipper, concluded the broadcast: "And from the crew of Apollo 8," he said, "we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth...
...crew circled the moon 10 times over the next 20 hours. On their final orbit, once again alone behind the moon, the crew re-lit the engine that was their only ticket home. If it had failed to burn, they would have been stranded forever in lunar orbit. The flight controllers - to say nothing of the families - waited anxiously for the astronauts to emerge from radio blackout. When they did, it was Lovell's voice that broke the silence...