On June 7, American astronaut William Anders, a member of the Apollo 8 crew, died in a plane crash, his son Greg Anders said.
Mr. William Anders (90 years old) was piloting a small plane when it crashed into the waters of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, USA.
He is the astronaut famous for taking the iconic Earthrise photo showing the planet as a shadowy blue marble from space in 1968.
A video recording the scene of the plane plunging from the sky before crashing into the water was shared on social networks.
The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call around 11:40 a.m. (local time) that “a vintage airplane had crashed into the water and sunk.”
According to the Federal Aviation Association, only the pilot, Mr. Anders, was on the Beech A45 plane at the time.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the crash.
The Earthrise photo was the first color photograph of Earth taken from space and is considered one of the most iconic images in modern history.
Earthrise is a photo of the Earth and part of the Moon’s surface taken by astronaut Bill Anders from lunar orbit on December 24, 1968, while performing the Apollo 8 mission. (Photo: Bill Anders )
“Bill Anders has forever changed our view of the planet and ourselves,” Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, also a retired NASA astronaut, wrote on X.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that Mr. Anders “traveled to the Moon’s doorstep and helped us all see something else: ourselves.”
Anders himself once said that this photo was his most important contribution to the space program. The Earth looks fragile and seemingly physically insignificant when viewed from space, but it is home, he said.
“To see this colorful and delicate orb, to me, was like a Christmas tree ornament appearing against the ugly, harsh, really contrasting landscape of the Moon’s surface,” he said .
The photo is said to have sparked a global environmental movement by showing how fragile and lonely the Earth looked in space.