Launch of Apollo 7

Apollo 7 was the first crewed flight of the Apollo program, carrying Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham on a Saturn IB rocket. The mission tested the Command and Service Module in Earth orbit for around eleven days, including the engine that would later be needed to leave lunar orbit. It came after the Apollo 1 fire of 1967 had killed three astronauts and forced a major redesign of the spacecraft. The crew gave the first live television broadcasts from an American spacecraft, though all three caught colds and had tense exchanges with ground control. The success of the flight cleared the way for the lunar-orbit mission of Apollo 8 two months later.

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