December 18, 2020
Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency relaxes on board the International Space Station on December 25, 2014.
NASA
On December 25, 1968, the staff of mission control at NASA received confirmation of a long-rumored and hotly debated phenomenon. Over the crackle of a transmission coming from space on Christmas morning, astronaut Jim Lovell disclosed what must have been one of the most closely-kept space secrets of the entire program:
“Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”
Misers may doubt the veracity of Lovell’s eyewitness account of a corpulent bearer of space gifts, but the message was a fitting one. The voyage of Apollo 8 to circle the moon marked the first time astronauts had spent the holiday outside the confines of Earth. That milestone was due in large part to the efforts of John F. Kennedy, the late president who had vowed that America would be the first country to land on the moon and that we
Transcripts For CSPAN2 U 20110307 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.