On December 21, 1968, he took off from the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral the Apollo 8 , the first manned mission to leave Earth orbit, reach and orbit the Moon (without landing on it), and finally return to Earth. The astronauts Frank Borman , James Lovell and Bill Anders they would be the first humans to leave Earth's orbit, the first to see the entire Earth and the far side of the Moon, and the first to see the Earth's sunrise from the Moon. TheApollo 8 it took 3 days to reach the satellite, orbited ten times over 20 hours, and returned on December 27.
The success of that mission would give the final push to the desire to take man to the Moon. On Christmas night, and while orbiting the Moon, the three astronauts broadcast live - breaking all audience records - describing what they were seeing and what they felt. Bill Anders took the floor and said:
We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and the crew of Apollo 8 has a message for all mankind.
At that moment - prepared by themselves and without NASA's knowledge - the three astronauts took turns reading the Creation passage from Genesis. Ending with a:
Merry Christmas! And may God bless you all.
Apollo 8 astronauts
The reading of that biblical passage led NASA to a lawsuit filed by the atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair . This woman, founder of American Atheists , she was known for the case Murray vs Curlett , which culminated in the prohibition, according to a Supreme Court ruling of 1963, of the reading of the Bible in American schools and public institutions for violating the constitutional separation between Church and State. According to the lawsuit, the astronauts were public employees and were also subject to a ban on public Bible reading, regardless of whether it had occurred on the Moon. So, NASA, while preparing Apollo XI, which would take man to the Moon, decided to leave religious issues aside in the missions.
In 1970, the Supreme Court dismissed Madalyn Murray O'Hair's lawsuit against NASA for…
lack of jurisdiction on the Moon.