Apollo 8 8 are the names of the three astronauts. The initial design of the insignia was developed by Jim Lovell, who reportedly sketched it while riding in the back seat of a T-38 flight from California to Houston shortly after learning of the Apollo 8's re-designation as a lunar-orbital mission. The crew wanted to name their spacecraft, but NASA did not allow it. The crew would have likely chosen "Columbiad", the name of the giant cannon that launches a space vehicle in Jules Verne's 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon". The Apollo 11 CM was named "Columbia" in part
Journey of Apollo 15 to the Moon fuel on the LM, allowing it to land with more equipment and consumables on board. A major issue for all lunar orbiting spacecraft are mass concentrations or "mascons". These are regional areas where denser material is under the surface. Apollo 15 travelled over regions that had never been covered on previous flights, so it was unknown how its orbit would be affected by them. Mission Control predicted that by the time the crew awoke the next "morning", the lowest point of their orbit, perilune, would have dropped to about 8.6 nm (16.1 km) but this turned out to be an