Wired: Dec. 24, 1968: Christmas Eve Greetings From Lunar Orbit
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders made their now-celebrated broadcast after entering lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, which might help explain the heavy religious content of the message. After announcing the arrival of lunar sunrise, each astronaut read from the Book of Genesis.
How this went down at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union is unknown, but it stands in stark contrast to the alleged message sent back to Earth several years earlier by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
"I don't see any God up here," Gagarin reportedly said from his vantage point aboard Vostok I, although the accuracy of that statement has been challenged over the years. True or not, the reactions were poles apart and did nothing to diminish the God-fearing-West–vs.–godless-commies propaganda campaign very prevalent in the United States at the time.
The crew of Apollo 8 didn't claim to see God, either, but they were clearly impressed by His handiwork. "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth," Lovell said during another broadcast. (There were six broadcasts from the crew in all.) …
One of my earliest memories is watching this event on the television at Grandpa and Grandma Kruse's house in Oklahoma City. Like the one above, the pictures of Earth become the icons of the rising environmental movement and the Earth Day movement. Here is a clip of the scripture reading.
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