What did Apollo 8 read on Christmas Eve 1968?

The first people around the Moon

Apollo 8 lifted off from Florida on December 21, 1968, the first Saturn V to carry a crew. It was a gamble. The lunar module was not ready, and the CIA warned that a Soviet crew might fly around the Moon first, so NASA sent the command module alone, with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. On December 24 they fired their engine behind the Moon and went into lunar orbit, the first humans to circle another world. They made ten orbits in about twenty hours.

Earthrise

On the fourth orbit, as the spacecraft came around from the far side, Anders saw the Earth come up over the gray horizon. The onboard tape recorded him:

Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!

Borman teased him: “Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.” Anders shot one black-and-white frame, then called urgently for a roll of color film. The color photograph he took about a minute later, catalogued as AS08-14-2383, is the one the world knows as Earthrise.

The reading

That evening, Christmas Eve in the United States, the crew went live on television during the ninth orbit. They described the lunar surface sliding by below, and as the spacecraft neared the line between lunar day and night, Anders announced that the crew had a message for everyone back on Earth. Then he began to read.

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. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

Lovell read verses 5 to 8, from the first day and night to the firmament called Heaven. Borman read verses 9 and 10, the gathering of the seas and the dry land called Earth, and signed off:

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.

Houston’s public affairs officer told listeners it had been “both a biblical and a geological lesson that none of us will forget.”

Why Genesis?

Before the flight, Borman was told only that the crew would be on television on Christmas Eve and should say something fitting. After asking friends for ideas, the crew chose the opening of the Bible: the creation of the heavens and the very Earth they were looking back at, in the King James wording most familiar to Americans of the time. The verses were typed onto fireproof paper and tucked into the back of the flight plan. In Genesis the story goes on to the first humans and a garden; where that garden was placed is another question, taken up in Where was the Garden of Eden located?

Not everyone approved. The atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued NASA over the reading, and the courts dismissed the case. Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific on December 27. Time named the three astronauts its Men of the Year, and in 1969 the Post Office issued a stamp that set Earthrise beside the words “In the beginning God.” Seven months later, Apollo 11 landed.