But NASA recovered, overhauling its designs and methods, to achieve a successful manned launch with Apollo 7. Then came the launch of Apollo 8 aboard the mighty Saturn V rocket - the largest and ...

56 years ago today, the Apollo 10 "dress rehearsal" mission launched into orbit, to set up the Apollo 11 moon landing mission a month later.

Dec. 21, 1968: Apollo 8 launches aboard a Saturn V rocket before ferrying three American astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders — to the Moon.

Former NASA astronaut Frank Borman, who in 1968 led the first mission to fly humans to the moon, has died. Borman lifted off twice: on the Gemini 7 mission in 1965 and Apollo 8 into lunar orbit.