Remembering the first Christmas in space: Here’s how it happened

1968 was a turbulent year for America. As the Vietnam War raged and peaceful figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., lost their lives at assassins’ hands, cities across the United States were convulsed by riots.

In the midst of the chaos, three men left the earth behind, trading the strife of the world below for the silent, contemplative vacuum of space. While orbiting the moon, they shared a Christian message with an enraptured audience of hundreds of millions.

Guy Consolmagno, a Ph.D. astronomer and Jesuit brother who directs the Vatican Observatory, told CNA that he remembers watching the NASA astronauts blast off while huddled with friends and family around a grainy TV set. He also remembers hearing the astronauts read a passage from the Bible — a choice that Consolmagno found unexpected and deeply moving.

More than five decades later, Consolmagno still loves talking about this episode from history. It helped set him on the path he’s on today, as a joyful practitioner of his faith but also as an accomplished scientist. The first Christmas in space was, he said, “fulfilling and affirming in a way that I would never have guessed.”

Mankind had dreamed of reaching the moon for millennia, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that it finally became achievable. The United States launched the Apollo program in 1961 in response to President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Amid the chill of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had been making strides in its own space program, and there were rumors that it would beat the U.S. to the moon. NASA shifted into high gear.

The mission on which the USA’s lunar ambitions rested, Apollo 8, was stunningly ambitious. The rocket they were planning to use had never carried a crew before, and a recent unmanned test mission, Apollo 6, had failed.

Worst of all, a 1967 fire in a test capsule claimed the lives of three Apollo astronauts. To say the odds were stacked against NASA would be an understatement.

Moreover, the timing of the mission was critical, as the distance between the earth and the moon varies. By NASA’s calculations in the fall of 1968, the optimum date for a shot at lunar orbit was just a few short months away, in late December.

By Dec. 21, 1968, a Saturn V rocket was ready on NASA’s launchpad in Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders aboard. The Saturn V is the most powerful vehicle created by humans before or since, and at that point had never carried humans before.

After blastoff, the astronauts kept a running diary, chronicling sights no human had ever seen before. Borman, Lovell, and Anders became the first human beings to leave earth’s orbit and the first to glimpse the far side of the moon. Oh, and not to mention they set a new speed record for the human race: 24,200 mph.

By Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 reached lunar orbit. The spacecraft had a TV camera on board, and the men would send back a total of six broadcasts, the last of which was during prime time. It is this broadcast that Consolmagno remembers so clearly.

For the Christmas Eve broadcast, NASA hadn’t given the men any specific instructions on what they should say, only that they say something “appropriate.”