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PICTURE SHOWS: The Apollo 8 crew became the first astronauts to fly the 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket, lifting off Dec. 21, 1968 with 7.5 million pounds of thrust. The vehicle has just cleared the tower at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. ...... STORY COPY: The Christmas season 50 years ago saw the first humans to leave Earth orbit: their destination, 234,000 miles away, was the Moon. Dec. 21, 1968, saw the crew of NASA's Apollo 8 blast off on the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket. The six-day mission would see them orbit the moon ten times, taking detailed images of the lunar surface vital for flight planners to select landing sites for upcoming missions to land on the Moon. Christmas Eve saw millions around the world watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, became the first humans to orbit another world. As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis, closing with a wish for everyone "on the good Earth." The mission was also famous for the iconic "Earthrise" image, snapped by Anders, which would give humankind a new perspective on their home planet. Anders has said that despite all the training and preparation for an exploration of the moon, the astronauts ended up discovering Earth. The Apollo 8 astronauts got where they were that Christmas Eve because of a bold, improvisational call by NASA. With the clock ticking on President Kennedy's challenge to land on the moon by decade's end, delays with the lunar module were threatening to slow the Apollo program. So NASA decided to change mission plans and send the Apollo 8 crew all the way to the moon without a lunar module. On Christmas morning, mission control waited anxiously for word that Apollo 8's engine burn to leave lunar orbit had worked. They soon got confirmation when Lovell radioed, "