Apollo 8

Apollo 8 was a mission in the Apollo program in December 1968. It was the first crewed spaceflight to leave Earth orbit and first to orbit the Moon. Commander Frank Borman, Pilot Jim Lovell and Bill Anders transmitted a television show while they were in orbit. The Apollo Lunar Module that could land on the Moon had not yet been built, so they went in the Apollo Command/Service Module and photographed and studied the Moon from above. Ten orbits around the Moon took twenty hours. After that, they fired their rockets and returned to Earth.