Humanity sent manned ships in outer space 292 times. And yet only very few of these actually ventured outside Earth's dominion and visited the gravitational turf of another celestial body. The Apollo 8 mission was one of the few such excursions.

It happened in 1968, on December 24, to be more exact, when the Apollo command module actually entered the orbit of the moon. That was a very special New Years Eve, a moment of such great power and hope in the fate of mankind that even the great upheavals of that troubled year seemed a little less gloomy in retrospect.

As Ars Technica's Noble Intent journal recalls, 1968 was one of the darkest and most troubled times in recent American history. That was when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, when American troops sustained heavy casualties in Vietnam, and when police and protesters clashed at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Who knows how many people even knew or cared that Apollo 8 was launched on December 21 with Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders on board.

But they sure did look up and gaze at the moon when they saw the live TV broadcast made by NASA right from the module, which was by then well in the moon's orbit. It's not every Christmas that us human beings get this kind of blessing from so far away: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, and a Merry Christmas to all of you, all of you on the good Earth.” (Frank Borman was the one to end the lunar broadcast in such truly memorable manner).

Now that 40 years have passed since then, maybe it's high time humans celebrated another Christmas in space. Only this time, let's do it from the orbit of Mars.