Fifty-five years ago: Apollo 8 entered lunar gravity. (A TV view of Frank Borman during the transit to the Moon.)

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As if time stopped, Apollo 8 is balanced between world before accelerating into the unknown.  This is the moment, 55 years ago.  December 23, 1968, mid-afternoon over a broad side of the Americas.

This is the moment — precisely at 3:30 p.m. (EST) when not just Apollo 8 but the world and all the world’s peoples crosses the barrier into the gravity sphere of the Moon.  The Earth is 214,000 miles behind.  Our speed, which had been 24,200 mph when we left Earth orbit, is down to 2,216 mph.

Apollo 8 pushes through the line that separates the Earth’s gravity domain from that of the Moon, then plunges, gaining velocity, drawn by the hand of lunar gravity toward an unknown and unseen destination and destiny.  

The next day, Christmas Eve, the spacecraft will enter lunar orbit.  And the next after, begin its journey back to the home world.  Apollo 8 will returned, yes, but we stayed.  Even if we didn’t know it, even if we we entertained the illusion that in the decades after the last Apollo the moon was lost, we never left.

We’re not going back to the Moon in this decade of the 2020s — just returning to where we’ve been all the while.