Curated playlist
1968 in spaceflight
- Jim LovellJim Lovell flew to the Moon twice and never set foot on it. That distinction alone would make him one of the most unusual figures in the history of human spaceflight. But what truly separates Lovell from the dozen men who did walk on the…
- Donn F. EiseleDonn Eisele spent the 27th of January 1966 recovering from shoulder surgery in a hospital. Exactly one year later, on the 27th of January 1967, three astronauts who had taken his place died in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire. That pair of…
- Walter CunninghamWalter Cunningham sat in the lunar module pilot seat on the 11th of October 1968, aboard a spacecraft with no lunar module attached. Apollo 7 was the first crewed mission the Apollo program had ever flown. Its eleven days of system tests…
- Frank BormanFrank Borman received a telegram after returning from the Moon. It was from a stranger, and it said simply: "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968." That single line captures what Borman's most famous mission meant to a country that had spent…
- Wally SchirraWally Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of America's first crewed space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That distinction alone would be enough to earn him a place in history. But the full arc of his life reaches…
- EarthriseEarthrise is a photograph of Earth taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on the 24th of December, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. At the moment of its capture, at 16:39:39.3 UTC, no human had ever seen the Earth from this…
- Saturn IBThe Saturn IB carried an odd nickname: engineers called its first stage Cluster's Last Stand. NASA built this launch vehicle for the Apollo program as an uprated version of the earlier Saturn I. It filled a gap between that smaller rocket…
- Saturn VSaturn V stands 363 feet tall, taller than the Statue of Liberty by a wide margin, and when its five F-1 engines fired together during a test at what is now the Stennis Space Center, the roar shattered the plate-glass window of a bank…
- William AndersWilliam Anders took what many consider the most consequential photograph in human history, and he did it almost by accident. On the 24th of December 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon for its fourth orbit, and…
- Soyuz (rocket family)Soyuz holds the record for the most launches in the history of spaceflight. That single fact, buried in technical documents and launch logs, is extraordinary when you consider what it means: one rocket family, born in the Soviet Union…