Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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The U.S. Apollo 8 astronauts to-day [December 24] beamed a television broadcast to earth from their spacecraft skimming the surface of the moon. The first picture came about two and a half hours after the moonship swooped into lunar orbit. It showed a brightly-lit stretch of the moon’s surface, including some craters. After a few minutes, the onboard camera was aimed through another window, and the moon’s horizon was clearly visible at the top of the picture. All the shots of the moon were framed in the spacecraft’s round windows. The extreme brightness made it difficult to pick out landmarks, although definition became clearer as the spacecraft approached the darker part of the moon. Some of the craters appeared to have dark centres. Jokingly, the spacemen referred to some of the craters by such names as Borman and Collins – names of astronauts. They also referred to one as Houston, after the location in Texas of the manned spacecraft centre. There were no shots of the interior of the spacecraft or of the astronauts.
