NASA Apollo 8 Earth View Litho and North American Rockwell Corp. Presentation Le

Description

NASA Apollo 8 Earth View Litho and North American Rockwell Corp. Presentation Letter
The Presentation Letter of the Apollo 8 “Earth View” Lithograph is from J.F. Beau, Director of Quality & Reliability Assurance, Launch Operations for North American Rockwell Corp., Cocoa Beach Florida.
The accompanying NASA Lithograph (MSCL-22) is the Famous Earth View image, or what is today known as “Earthrise”.
Both the Letter and the Lithograph image are in Excellent Used Condition with no folds, stains/foxing, dog ears, tears, or writing
Please see all attached pictures
Shipping includes a Tracking Number
The Crew of Apollo 8 was the first people ever to leave the gravitational influence of the Earth and orbit another celestial body. They had survived a mission that even the crew themselves had rated as having only a fifty-fifty chance of fully succeeding. The effect of Apollo 8 was summed up in a telegram from a stranger, received by Borman after the mission that stated simply, "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968."
One of the most famous aspects of the flight was the
Earthrise
picture that the crew took as they came around for their fourth orbit of the Moon. The three
Astronaut/Crewmembers
Frank Borman
,
James Lovell
, and
William Anders
were the first humans to witness and photograph an
Earthrise
. This picture has been credited as one of the inspirations of the first
Earth Day
in 1970. It was selected as the first of Life magazine's 100 Photographs That Changed the World and the crew members were named
Time magazine
's
"Men of the Year"
for 1968 upon their return.
Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968),
and was the second
crewed spaceflight
mission flown in the United States
Apollo space program
after
Apollo 7
, which stayed in Earth orbit. Apollo 8 was the third flight and the first crewed launch of the
Saturn V
rocket, and was the first human spaceflight from the
Kennedy Space Center
, located adjacent to
Cape Kennedy Air Force Station
in Florida.
Apollo 8 was also flown at a time that some say was the Height of the Cold War with the Russians. Part of Apollo 8’s accelerated mission schedule was the need to Beat the Russians to the MOON! And We As A Nation Did Just That!!
Originally planned as the second crewed
Apollo Lunar Module
and
command module
test, to be flown in an elliptical
medium Earth orbit
in early 1969, the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious command-module-only lunar orbital flight to be flown in December, as the lunar module was not yet ready to make its first flight. Astronaut
Jim McDivitt
's crew, who were training to fly the first lunar module flight in low Earth orbit, became the crew for the
Apollo 9
mission, and Borman's crew were moved to the Apollo 8 mission. This left Borman's crew with two to three months' less training and preparation time than originally planned, and replaced the planned lunar module training with translunar navigation training.
Apollo 8 took 68 hours (almost three days) to 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 Eve
television broadcast
in which they
read the first ten verses from
the
Book of Genesis
. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for
Apollo 11
to fulfill U.S. president
John F. Kennedy
's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the northern Pacific Ocean.