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
Apollo 15 the same time, Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden orbited the Moon, using a scientific instrument module (SIM) in the service module (SM) to study the lunar surface and environment in great detail with a panoramic camera, a gamma-ray spectrometer, a mapping camera, a laser altimeter, a mass spectrometer, and a lunar subsatellite deployed at the end of Apollo 15's stay in lunar orbit (an Apollo program first). The mission successfully accomplished its objectives, but was marred by negative publicity that accompanied disclosure of the crew carrying unauthorized postage covers to the Moon, some of which were sold by a West