This Day in History: 1968-12-24

The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed ten lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures. Frances “Poppy” Northcutt became the first woman engineer in NASA’s Mission Control, starting with Apollo 8. She worked with male colleagues to plan the trajectory for Apollo 8 to return to Earth, and was later involved in Apollo 11 and the efforts to bring Apollo 13 home after it got into trouble. Programmer Margaret Hamilton was the lead programmer on the groundbreaking Apollo guidance computer, which had less capacity than today’s mobile phones, and worked on every crewed mission, including Apollo 8.