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
Canceled Apollo missions to Apollo 17 under pressure from the scientific community, replacing Joe Engle. Schmitt, a geologist, became the only professional scientist and the twelfth man to walk on the Moon. Slayton's intention for the Apollo 19 crew was the original (prior to cancellation) Apollo 16 backup crew: For Apollo 20 there is even more uncertainty. Based on normal crew rotation, the crew would likely have been: Another possibility would have been: One of the surplus CSMs, CSM-119, was modified to carry two additional crew and kept on standby for a potential rescue mission in case of issues on-board Skylab. During Skylab