Apollo 7: First Manned Flight (1968)

Duration: 14:11

Year Published: 1968

Format: 16mm

Sound: sound

Description: Produced by North American Rockwell, this industrial film chronicles the Apollo 7 mission, from the delivery of spacecraft components to checkout and mating to launch to each of the mission objectives to finally splashdown. Launched on October 11, 1968, Apollo 7 was the first mission since the ill-fated Apollo 1 in January 1967 to have a full crew aboard the Apollo spacecraft. As such, it became the first successful manned Apollo flight. The Apollo 7 mission also provided the first live television transmission from space, and we see a brief clip of the show the astronauts put on for viewers on Earth here. Of particular note, the film contains a lot of original audio recorded during the mission, capturing launch and mission control, the astronauts, and also post-mission comments made by NASA officials.