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Forty-five years ago, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the Moon,

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and the first to witness the magnificent sight called "Earthrise."

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Now, for the first time, we can see this historic event exactly as the astronauts saw it,

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thanks to new data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO.

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LRO's superb global lunar maps, combined with the astronauts' own photographs,

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reveal where Apollo 8 was over the Moon, and even its precise orientation in space,

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when the astronauts first saw the Earth rising above the Moon's barren horizon.

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On December 24, 1968, a few minutes after 10:30 am Houston time,

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Apollo 8 was coming around from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time.

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Mission Commander Frank Borman was in the left-hand seat, preparing to turn the spacecraft to a new orientation according to the flight plan.

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Navigator Jim Lovell was in the spacecraft's lower equipment bay, about to make sightings on lunar landmarks with the onboard sextant,

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and Bill Anders was in the right-hand seat, observing the Moon through his side window,

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and taking pictures with a Hasselblad still camera, fitted with a 250-mm telephoto lens.

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Meanwhile, a second Hasselblad with an 80-mm lens was mounted in Borman's front-facing window, the so-called rendezvous window,

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photographing the Moon on an automatic timer: a new picture every twenty seconds.

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These photographs, matched with LRO's high resolution terrain maps, show that Borman was still turning Apollo 8 when the Earth appeared.

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It was only because of the timing of this rotation that the Earthrise,

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which had happened on Apollo 8's three previous orbits, but was unseen by the astronauts, now came into view in Bill Anders's side window.

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Here's what it looked like, as recreated from LRO data by Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.

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You'll hear the astronauts' voices as captured by Apollo 8's onboard tape recorder,

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beginning with Frank Borman announcing the start of the roll maneuver,

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and you'll see the rising Earth move from one window to another as Apollo 8 turns.

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For the astronauts, seeing the Earthrise was an unexpected and electrifying experience,

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and one of the three photographs taken by Bill Anders became an iconic image of the 20th century.

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But as we've just seen and heard, that photograph was actually a group effort: 

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not just because Jim Lovell found the roll of color film and gave it to Anders,

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but because the astronauts wouldn't have seen the Earth if Frank Borman hadn't been turning the spacecraft just as it was coming up.

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Today, the Earthrise has become a symbol of one of history's greatest explorations,

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when humans first journeyed to another world and then, looking back,

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saw their home planet, in Lovell's words, as a grand oasis in the vastness of space.

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I'm Andrew Chaikin, author of "A Man on the Moon."

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