Apollo 8 which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The crew members were named "Time" magazine's "Men of the Year" for 1968 upon their
Return of Apollo 15 to Earth which was launched using a spring-loaded mechanism, a pin in a curved groove to impart a spin in the satellite. The spinning helped to stabilise the craft. After having the information needed to burn the SPS to send them home radioed from Mission Control, "Apollo 15" disappeared behind the Moon for the last time. Igniting on time, the SPS burned for 2 minutes, 21 seconds, adding 3,050 ft/s (930 m/s) to their speed. Little was left for the crew to do on their tenth day in space. They continued to photograph the lunar surface as it receded from them, using