{"id":18213,"date":"2018-12-25T01:28:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T17:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/how-engineers-and-astronauts-made-apollo-8s-earthrise-trip-to-the-moon-possible-50-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2018-12-25T01:28:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T17:28:42","slug":"how-engineers-and-astronauts-made-apollo-8s-earthrise-trip-to-the-moon-possible-50-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/how-engineers-and-astronauts-made-apollo-8s-earthrise-trip-to-the-moon-possible-50-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"How engineers (and astronauts) made Apollo 8\u2019s \u2018Earthrise\u2019 trip to the moon possible 50 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_470103\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-470103\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-470103\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181224-earthrise-630x605.jpg\" alt=\"Earthrise\" width=\"630\" height=\"605\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181224-earthrise-630x605.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181224-earthrise-768x738.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181224-earthrise.jpg 1041w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-470103\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apollo 8\u2019s astronauts were the first to witness Earthrise from lunar orbit, on Christmas Eve in 1968. (NASA Photo \/ Bill Anders)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It\u2019s been 50 years to the day since Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders\u2019 \u201cEarthrise\u201d photo changed our world forever, but that mission to the moon and back wouldn\u2019t have happened the way it did if it weren\u2019t for a giant leap in technology.<\/p>\n<p>That comes through loud and clear in \u201cApollo\u2019s Daring Mission,\u201d a NOVA documentary making its debut on public television on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNASA usually went step-by-step. In this case, they jumped three or four steps,\u201d the 85-year-old Anders, who now lives in Anacortes, Wash., says during the show.<\/p>\n<p>The Apollo 8 story usually spotlights the impact of Anders\u2019 photos, which show our planet hanging over the moon\u2019s surface, and the magic of the crew\u2019s Christmas Eve reading from Genesis. Those moments get their due in \u201cApollo\u2019s Daring Mission.\u201d But the show focuses primarily on the engineering magic that opened the way for history to be made in 1968.<\/p>\n<p>Apollo 8 wasn\u2019t supposed to go to the moon. It was originally meant to be an initial crewed test of NASA\u2019s Saturn V moon rocket and Apollo command module in Earth orbit, following Apollo 7\u2019s test flight with the less powerful Saturn 1B launch vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>But CIA imagery suggested that the Soviets were preparing to send cosmonauts on a flight around the moon&nbsp;in late 1968 or early 1969. That led NASA planners to abandon their step-by-step plan and consider sending Apollo 8\u2019s astronauts&nbsp;\u2014 Anders, Jim Lovell and mission commander Frank Borman&nbsp;\u2014 on their own round-the-moon trip. (The fact that the Apollo lunar module wasn\u2019t yet ready for testing was another factor behind NASA\u2019s plan.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"NOVA Apollo's Daring Mission PREVIEW\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/THSL2hzjeAc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Could the Saturn V and the Apollo spaceship be ready in time? The NOVA program traces how engineers had to tweak the design of the Saturn V\u2019s F-1 rocket engines to make sure they didn\u2019t blow themselves apart due to combustion instability. \u201cThe solution had to come by trial and error,\u201d rocket engineer Sonny Morea recalls.<\/p>\n<p>Adding baffles to the F-1\u2019s injector plate turned out to be the key to dampening the instability. NOVA\u2019s animation makes clear why the solution worked. (You\u2019ll get your chance to see the baffles themselves at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight, courtesy of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 F-1 engine recovery effort.)<\/p>\n<p>Engineers had to devise an inertial navigation system that worked for the Earth-to-moon trip, with corrections made by eyeballing the stars through a space sextant.<\/p>\n<p>And they had to create the first real-time embedded computing system, controlled by punching codes into a display keyboard. \u201cApollo\u2019s Daring Mission\u201d shines a well-deserved spotlight on MIT software engineer Margaret Hamilton, whose leadership of the programming effort earned her a Presidential Medal of Freedom (and her own Lego minifigure).<\/p>\n<p>Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins gets a turn in the spotlight as well, by virtue of his role as Mission Control\u2019s capsule communicator. He was the guy who told the Apollo 8 crew on Dec. 21, 1968, that they were cleared to leave Earth\u2019s orbit and head for the moon, a milestone known as trans-lunar injection or TLI.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Apollo 8: Around The Moon and Back\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wfd0oC3eFWw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just wish I really had that moment to live over again,\u201d Collins says, \u201cbecause I would have said to them, \u2018Apollo 8, you can now slip the surly bonds of Earth&nbsp;and dance the sky, Apollo 8. Dance the sky! You go!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Go they did, and \u201cApollo\u2019s Daring Mission\u201d retells the tale of the engine firings that had to work perfectly, behind the moon and out of contact with Mission Control, in order to put the command module into lunar orbit and eventually send it back toward Earth again.<\/p>\n<p>During the 20 hours or so that separated lunar arrival and departure, Apollo 8\u2019s crew took pictures surveying the moon\u2019s surface for future landing sites. In the middle of their survey, Anders looked up from his camera and became the first human to marvel at the sight of Earth rising over the moon\u2019s horizon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh my God, look at that picture over there,\u201d Anders said, turning the camera. \u201cThere\u2019s the Earth comin\u2019 up. Wow, is that pretty!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, don\u2019t take that, it\u2019s not scheduled,\u201d Borman joked.<\/p>\n<p>But Anders did take the picture, first in black-and-white, and then in color. For a detailed recreation of the Earthrise experience, augmented by modern-day imagery from NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, check out this video from NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Earthrise in 4K\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LHbFIieK-uo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The iconic Earthrise shot put our pale blue dot in cosmic perspective as no previous picture could, and gave rise to a phenomenon known as the \u201cOverview Effect\u201d: a deep feeling of connectedness, accompanied by the sense that protecting Earth should take priority over society\u2019s petty divisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth,\u201d Anders said after the mission.<\/p>\n<p>But Earthrise wasn\u2019t Apollo 8\u2019s only legacy. \u201cThis is the moment that the Space Race ends,\u201d engineer-historian David Mindell, author of the book \u201cDigital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight,\u201d says during the NOVA show.<\/p>\n<p>It turned out that the CIA was right about the Soviets\u2019 intentions, but due to technical problems, their crewed round-the-moon mission couldn\u2019t make its planned launch date in early December 1968. After Apollo 8, and after the Apollo 11 moon landing that came seven months later, the Soviet moon program fizzled out.<\/p>\n<p>Mindell also argues that Apollo 8 set the stage for America\u2019s primacy on another technological frontier. \u201cNow, we have digital computers in everything,\u201d he explains. \u201cThis was the first digital computer in almost anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years later, the digital revolution is fueling another golden age for space commerce and exploration. There\u2019s no way commercial space ventures such as SpaceX and Blue Origin could do what they\u2019re doing without advanced software tools, plus the frontier-pushing mindset that has guided the careers of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and so many others.<\/p>\n<p>More than Earthrise, Apollo 8\u2019s legacy of technological innovation is what will take us back to the moon, this time to stay \u2014 and push us onward to new horizons.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cApollo\u2019s Daring Mission\u201d makes its debut on PBS stations on Wednesday. Check local listings for times. For another take on the Apollo 8 mission, check out \u201cEarthrise,\u201d a 30-minute film by&nbsp;Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apollo 8\u2019s astronauts were the first to witness Earthrise from lunar orbit, on Christmas Eve in 1968. (NASA Photo \/ Bill Anders) It\u2019s been 50 years to the day since Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders\u2019 \u201cEarthrise\u201d photo changed our world forever, but that mission to the moon and back wouldn\u2019t have happened the way it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1651,1028,625,346,4029,4551],"class_list":["post-18213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apollo","tag-apollo-8","tag-moon","tag-nova","tag-space-history","tag-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}