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The Quarks editorial team struggled with ESA for many months to get this interview opportunity, and on December 11th the time had come: WDR broadcast Ranga Yogeshwar's exclusive interview with Alexander Gerst on the International Space Station. Alexander Gerst is the first German commander on the International Space Station ISS. A leak in the outer skin and a near-disaster during the launch of a Soyuz capsule are just two examples of the great challenges he and the astronaut team on the ISS faced. We also look at how the history of space travel began: 50 years ago, on Christmas 1968, the first manned spacecraft orbited the moon. The astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission were the first people to see the earth rising above the lunar surface. On Christmas Eve the image went around the world. It became a symbol of its time, revealing the fragility of the earth. NASA had set up the Apollo program in just seven years. At the beginning there were no computers, no rockets big enough, not even experience in weightlessness. Quarks tells how the Americans' first flight to the moon was successful on the first attempt and how Apollo 8 laid the foundation for Neil Armstrong to be the first person to set foot on the Earth's satellite just 7 months later. Editor: Wolfgang Lemme and Monika Grebe Authors: Sebastian Funk, Ingo Knopf and Ulrich Grünewald --- Thanks for watching! Did you like the video? Then subscribe now to the only official Quarks channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Quarks?sub_co... Quarks on Facebook: / quarks.de Also visit: https://www.quarks.de Quarks on Instagram: / quarks.de / beautyquarks Here you can access the programs in the WDR media library: https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/s... https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/s...