The Apollo 8 crew had the privilege of seeing parts of our space partner that had never been viewed before. Prior to this, people had only seen images in a few low-quality photographs.
Shortly after that, American astronauts brought home the first samples of soil from the Moon. Did you know that the moon samples were also researched in Czechoslovak laboratories? Did you know we have an actual Moon stone here in the Czech Republic? Do you know which American astronaut brought in an auction a vehicle that is still parked on the Moon?
These and other fascinating questions will be answered by Milan Halousek, an expert from the Czech Space Agency.
Apollo 8 was the first mission to take humans to the Moon and back. An important prelude to actually landing on the Moon was testing the flight trajectory and operations for getting there and back. Apollo 8 did this and achieved many other firsts including the first manned mission launched on the Saturn V, first manned launch from NASA’s new Moonport, first pictures taken by humans of the Earth from deep space, and first live TV coverage of the lunar surface.
