Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders, who took the iconic \u201cEarthrise\u201d photo of our home planet from the Moon in 1968, was killed on June 7, 2024. Anders was flying alone in his Beechcraft T-34 Mentor aircraft \u00a0when the plane plunged into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. Anders was 90.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt every step of Bill\u2019s life was the iron will of a pioneer, the grand passion of a visionary, the cool skill of a pilot, and the heart of an adventurer who explored on behalf of all of us,\u201d said NASA Administrator Bill in Nelson in a statement. \u201cHis impact will live on through the generations. All of NASA, and all of those who look up into the twinkling heavens and see grand new possibilities of dazzling new dreams, will miss a great hero who has passed on.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n A video of the accident taken by a bystander who witnessed the crash appears to show Anders failing to pull up at the bottom of a loop, with the plane impacting the water at high speed.<\/p>\n His family issued a statement that they were devastated. \u201cHe was a great pilot and we will miss him terribly,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n After becoming a fighter pilot in the Air Force, Anders was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1964. He was backup pilot for the Gemini XI and Apollo 11 flights, and he was lunar module pilot for Apollo 8, the first mission with humans on board to enter lunar orbit. \u00a0<\/p>\n During the first three orbits around the Moon, the Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders kept the Apollo Command Module\u2019s windows pointing down toward the surface of the Moon while they hurriedly filmed and photographed the craters and mountains below. One of their main tasks was reconnaissance for future Apollo landings.<\/p>\n On the fourth swing around from the Moon\u2019s farside, Borman rolled the spacecraft to a different orientation, pointing the windows toward the horizon to get a navigational fix. A few minutes later, Anders spotted a blue and white object appearing over the Moon\u2019s horizon, a heart-catching sight of planet Earth, a \u201cgrand oasis in the vast loneliness of space,\u201d as Lovell later described it.<\/p>\n \u201cOh my God, look at that picture over there!\u201d Anders said. \u201cThere\u2019s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!\u201d Anders called for Lovell to quickly grab some color film.<\/p>\n Apollo 8\u2019s flight was a bold and unexpected move by NASA to send a crew to lunar orbit, but the audacious flight in December 1968 set the stage for the Apollo 11 Moon landing seven months later. Apollo 8 also capped off a turbulent year on Earth, following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the escalating Vietnam War and anti-war protests that led to violence, and an intensifying Cold War with the USSR. After the Apollo 8 crew returned home, a well-wisher sent a telegram to the crew, saying that they had saved 1968. <\/p>\n The Earthrise photo has been called one of the most important images ever taken.<\/p>\n On Earth Day in 2008, Anders reflected on the famous picture that\u2019s become one of the most frequently used images ever. Anders said even though it wasn\u2019t in the original flight plan to take pictures of Earth, it didn\u2019t take much time for him to realize how striking this view of the Earth was, and quickly snapped the celebrated image.<\/p>\n \u201cI instantly thought it was ironic; we had come all this way to study the moon, and yet it was this view of the Earth that was one of the most important events for Apollo,\u201d said Anders in an interview on NASA TV.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are basically two messages that came to me,\u201d Anders said of the picture. \u201cOne of them is that the planet is quite fragile. It reminded me of a Christmas tree ornament. But the other message to me, and I don\u2019t think this one has really sunk in yet, is that the Earth is really small. We\u2019re not the center of the universe; we\u2019re way out in left field on a tiny dust mote, but it is our home and we need to take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Anders said it didn\u2019t take long after the crew had returned home for this photograph to become iconic for the environmental movement.<\/p>\n \u201cBack in the 60\u2019s, it gave us a sense that the world was a place we all shared together,\u201d Anders said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t see any boundaries from space.\u201d<\/p>\n Anders left NASA in 1969 to become the executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. In 1973, he was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission, where he led all nuclear and non-nuclear power research and development. Later, he was named the U.S. chairman of the technology exchange program for nuclear fission and fusion power with the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/apollo-8.jpg\")
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