High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Apollo 8, the second manned mission in the American Apollo space program, was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit; the first to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and the first crewed voyage to return to Earth from another celestial body—Earth`s Moon. The three-man crew of mission Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit, the first to see Earth as a whole planet, and then the first to directly see the far side of the Moon. The 1968 mission, the first manned launch of a Saturn V rocket, was also the first manned launch from the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida, located adjacent to Cape Canaveral.