Video: 'Apollo 8 CBS' (Apollo 8 leaves Earth's orbit on video #13 at 2:10)

(Saturday, December 21, 1968, 15:47:05 UTC) — The three astronauts of Apollo 8 soared through the black emptiness of space today their way to man’s first rendezvous with the moon.

The spacecraft overcame the earth’s gravitational grip sufficiently to send it toward the moon at an initial speed of 24,200 miles an hour.

It was man’s most far-reaching journey yet, the first time he had flown faster than the approximately 17,400 miles an hour in near-earth orbit or headed toward another body in the solar system.

Flying higher and faster than man has ever traveled, looking back on the receding earth as a greenish-blue sphere, the astronauts were assured by controllers on the ground that they were on a true course for their planned orbit of the moon on Christmas Eve.

Col. Frank Borman of the Air Force, Capt. James A. Lovell Jr., of the Navy and Maj. William A. Anders of the Air Force set out from Cape Kennedy, Florida, at 7:51 a.m. EST on the fiery strength of the Saturn 5 rocket, the most powerful ever flown.

The thunderous, earth-shaking launching was described as flawless. The three-stage rocket, rising out of billowing flames into the blue sky, slowly at first, then like a streaking comet, took 11 1/2 minutes to boost the astronauts into an 118-mile-high orbit of the earth.

After they completed nearly two orbits, in which they determined that the spacecraft was working properly, the Saturn rocket’s third stage, still attached to the Apollo capsule in which the astronauts rode, was refired at 10:41 a.m. EST. The five-minute refiring sent the craft out of earth orbit and toward the moon.