WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

North American Rockwell artist's concept illustrating a phase of the scheduled Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission. Here, the Apollo 8 spacecraft lunar module adapter (SLA) panels, which have supported the Command and Service Modules, are jettisoned. This is done by astronauts firing the service module reaction control engines. A signal simultaneously deploys and jettisons the panels, separating the spacecraft from the SLA and deploying the high gain (deep space) antenna.