Spacelog Apollo 8

That's real fine.

Apollo 8, can you tell us which window you are looking out? And there is a large crater, looks like it is sticking up in the upper right hand corner of our picture. Can you identify that one?

Roger. We are just about to lose our lock; that is why we are slowing up a little bit. We see the Sea of Crises in front of us now. We are looking out the left hand rendezvous window.

Houston, how are you reading us now?

Loud and clear.

The crater you see on the horizon is the Sea of Crises. How are you reading us, Houston?

Loud and clear, Apollo 8, and we have a picture that is good.

Right.

Roger. We are getting a lot of static. The Sea of Crises is in front of us on the horizon, and the dark crater Picard can be seen in the middle. We are now breaking the moon's sunrise or the spacecraft's sunset. This is an area that the sun has just recently come up on the moon. The mare we are over now has a mottled look about it, but not very heavily cratered, so it must be relatively new. This is the Sea of Fertility, and we're coming upon a large crater, the delta rim variety; has a strange circular cracked pattern around the middle of it. The crater that you see now is about 30 or 40 miles across.

How is your picture quality, Houston?

This is phenomenal.

There is an interesting rill directly in front of the spacecraft now, running along the edge of a small mountain; rather sinuous shape with right-angle turns.

This area just to the west of the Sea of Crises is called the Marsh of Sleep and to the west of that the Sea of Tranquility.

Can you see the fracture patterns going across the mare in front of us now, Houston?

In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, “let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light and that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, “let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters.” And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.