William Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut who took ‘Earthrise’ photo from space, killed in plane crash

William Anders, who took the iconic ‘Earthrise’ photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968 during NASA’s Apollo 8 mission, was killed on June 8 in a place crash.  

The plane, which the retired major general was piloting alone fell into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death, AP reported.   

A US Naval Academy graduate and Air Force pilot, Anders joined NASA in 1963 as a member of the third group of astronauts. He was a crew in the Apollo 8 mission, which lifted 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” on 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.  

Apollo 8, originally scheduled for 1969, was pushed forward because of concerns the Russians were accelerating their own plans for a trip around the Moon by 1968. The crew got only a few months to train for the historic and highly risky mission.  

During the flight, Anders captured what became one of history’s most iconic photographs, an image of Earth rising over the lunar horizon.  

He recounted how earth looked fragile and seemingly physically insignificant yet was home.  

“We’d been going backwards and upside down, didn't really see the Earth or the Sun, and when we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earthrise,” he said.  

He also played a key role in another indelible episode from that Christmas Eve mission - leading off as the crew read from the Book of Genesis while Apollo 8 transmitted images of the lunar surface to Earth.  

The three astronauts were greeted as national heroes when they splashed down three days later in the Pacific Ocean and were feted as Time magazine’s “Men of the Year”.  

Their mission paved the way to the first moon landing by Apollo 11 seven months later, assuring US victory in the Cold War “space race” with the Soviets.  

(With inputs from agencies)