Forty years ago this week, three men in a tiny spacecraft slipped their earthly bonds and traveled where no one else had before, circling the moon 10 times and beaming back an iconic image of a blue-and-white Earth in the distance, solitary but bound as one against the black vastness beyond.

The voyage of Apollo 8 from December 21-27, 1968, marked humans' first venture to another heavenly body.

"We were flying to the moon for the first time," said Jim Lovell, one of the three astronauts aboard the historic flight."Seeing the far side of the moon for the first time. Coming around and seeing the Earth as it really is -- a small fragile planet with a rather normal star, our sun."