(2 of 4)
Everything indicates that the Soviets would welcome them. Awaiting the astronauts' arrival in Houston was a telegram from ten Russian cosmonauts who have made successful spaceflights. "We followed very closely each stage of your flight," it read, "and note with satisfaction the precision of your joint work and your courage, which contributed to the excellent completion of this important experiment. We are confident that the exploration of outer space will greatly benefit earthmen. We congratulate you on a successful step toward this noble goal." In contrast to the terse and often dour notices that have frequently followed U.S. space accomplishments, Tass hailed the Apollo 8 voyage as an "outstanding" success that "opens a new stage in the history of space research." Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny sent a cable to President Johnson calling the flight "a new accomplishment in conquering the outer space by man."
Russia was not alone in its praise. Pope Paul stated that the "very remarkable space achievement of the astronauts" should enrich mankind's spiritual life. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson cabled that the flight "has added a new dimension to our appreciation that this is indeed one world." There were similar messages from U.N. Secretary General U Thant, French President Charles de Gaulle, Premier Eisaku Sato of Japan, King Hassan of Morocco and a host of other world leaders. Even Havana radio contributed to worldwide reaction by presenting lengthy and approving appraisals of Apollo 8's moon mission.
Ethereal Beauty. The world's admiration became even greater with the publication of the pictures shot by Astronaut Anders on the way to and from the moon and during lunar orbit. They are the first color-film closeups of the moon and the first color views of the earth from deep space. They show views of the moon never before seen by man and some lunar features previously undetected by the cameras aboard unmanned vehicles. They reveal the distant earth as a globe of ethereal beauty that understandably evoked feelings of nostalgia in the Apollo astronauts.
Soon after they had left earth orbit and headed toward the moon, the astronauts pointed Apollo back toward earth and aimed a 16-mm. Maurer movie camera at the third-stage S-4B rocket, which had just been separated from the spacecraft. The resulting pictures show the receding rocket gleaming in the sunlight against a black sky as the blue, cloud-mottled earth hovers below. (Minutes earlier, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory scientists atop a mountain in the Hawaiian Islands had used a Baker-Nunn telescopic camera to shoot a spectacular picture of the S-4B, about 120 miles high, blasting Apollo out of earth orbit toward the moon.)
The Apollo 8 movie sequences also include pictures of a reddish earth (shot through a filter on the navigation transit) glowing in the black sky. As Apollo orbits the moon in a nose-down position, the movies show the barren landscape flashing by only 70 miles below, then seemingly reversing in a dizzying maneuver as the capsule rolls into a new attitude. In other color shots, inside the cabin, viewers can see dimly the astronauts shooting pictures out of the window, a flashlight hovering weightless in mid-cabin and finally twirling into place after being nudged by an astronaut's hand.