American ExperienceSeason 18, Episode 2 of 13 : Race To The Moon
On Christmas Eve, 1968, one of the largest audiences in television history tuned in to an extraordinary sight: a live telecast of the moon's surface as seen from Apollo 8. The historic journey of the first manned space flight to leave Earth's gravitational pull and orbit the moon captivated people around the world who welcomed a technological triumph in space after a year marked by assassinations, riots and war. As this film reveals, however, the mission's success was far from assured. The Apollo 8 astronauts had just four months to prepare for the risky mission, and catastrophic failure would have brought a halt to America's goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. With images and audio never before broadcast, this film recounts the flight many consider to be NASA's most daring and important.
