Apollo 8was the first crewedspacecraftto leavelow Earth orbitand the first to reach theMoon, orbit it, and return.Its three-astronautcrew —Frank Borman,James Lovell, andWilliam Anders— were the first humans to fly to the Moon, to witness and photograph anEarthrise, and to escape the gravity of a celestial body.Apollo 8 launched on December 21, 1968 and took 68 hours travel the distance to the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times over the course of twenty hours, during which they made a Christmas Evetelevision broadcastin which theyread the first ten verses fromtheBook of Genesis.