Quick technical note, because I can hear people coming for me: when Apollo performed the translunar injection or TLI burn to go to the Moon, it was entering a high Earth orbit that intersected the Moon’s path and let the spacecraft fall under it’s influence. That’s how they were set with the backup of free return trajectory, like what they relied on on Apollo 13. So *technically* they were in high Earth orbit until they did the Lunar Orbit Insertion or LOI burn. #author #history #space #nasa #ap