Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to the Moon, although its mission was only to fly past and not to land. The crew consisted of Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders. This mission also saw the first manned launch of the Saturn V rocket.
Apollo 8 was originally planned as an Earth-orbit mission to test the Lunar Module and Command Module, but was upgraded to a Lunar mission in August 1968. Some sources claim this change was made in response to the Soviet lunar missions such as Zond 5 and Zond 6, but other sources regard the deciding factors as being hardware and construction issues and/or time pressure to achieve the "end of the decade" deadline.
