William Anders, who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shaded blue marble from space in 1968 during NASA’s Apollo 8 mission, was killed June 8 in an accident.
The plane, which the retired major general was piloting alone, went down in the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90 years old. His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death, AP reported.
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and an Air Force pilot, Anders joined NASA in 1963 as a member of the third group of astronauts. He was part of the crew of the Apollo 8 mission, which took off on December 21, 1968 and was the first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit and travel 240,000 miles (386,000 km) to the Moon .
Anders was the “rookie” of the crew, alongside Frank Borman, the mission commander, and James Lovell, who had flown with Borman on Gemini 7 in 1965 and later commanded the ill-fated Apollo 13.
The Apollo 8 mission, originally planned for 1969, was postponed because the Russians feared accelerating their own plans to travel around the Moon by 1968. The crew had only a few months to train in view of this historic and very risky mission.
During the flight, Anders captured what became one of the most iconic photographs in history, an image of Earth rising above the lunar horizon.
He talked about how Earth seemed fragile and physically insignificant, yet it was his home.
“We had gone backwards and upside down, we hadn’t really seen the Earth or the Sun, and when we turned around and came back and saw the first Earthrise,” he said .
He also played a key role in another indelible episode of that Christmas Eve mission – beginning with the crew’s reading of the Book of Genesis as Apollo 8 transmitted images of the lunar surface to Earth.
The three astronauts were greeted as national heroes when they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean three days later and were hailed as “Men of the Year” by Time magazine.
Their mission paved the way for the first Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later, securing the United States’ victory in the Cold War “space race” with the Soviets.
(With contribution from agencies)
