Apollo 8 astronaut and ‘Earthrise’ photographer William Anders killed in plane crash in Washington

The former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo in 1968, showing the planet as a shadowy blue marble from space, has died in a plane crash.

Retired Major General William Anders was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone went down in the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington condition. He was 90.

“The family is devastated,” said his son Greg Anders, confirming his father’s body had been found.

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“He was a great driver and we will miss him terribly.”

At about 11:40 a.m., a report came in that an older model plane had crashed into the water and sunk near the north end of Jones Island, San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter said.

Only the pilot was aboard the Beech A45, according to the Federal Aviation Association.

Anders said the photo was his most significant contribution to space program given the environmental philosophical impact it had, along with ensuring that the Apollo 8 Command Module and Service Module were operational.

The photo, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photographs in modern history for the way it changed the way people look at the planet.

The photo is believed to have sparked the global environmental movement for showing how fragile and isolated Earth looks from space.

NASA Administrator and former senator Bill Nelson said Anders embodies the lessons and purpose of the study.

“He traveled to the doorstep of the moon and helped us all see something else: ourselves,” Nelson wrote on the social platform X.

Anders took the photo during the crew’s fourth lunar orbit, frantically switching from black-and-white to color film.

“Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders said. “Here comes the Earth. Wow, is that nice!’

The Apollo 8 mission in December 1968 was the first human spaceflight to leave low Earth orbit and travel to the Moon and back.

It was NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous journey to date, and the one that set the stage for the Apollo moon landings seven months later.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who is also a retired NASA astronaut, wrote on the social platform X: “Bill Anders forever changed our perspective on our planet and ourselves with his famous photo of the sunrise on Earth on Apollo 8.”

William Anders said in a 1997 NASA oral history interview that he didn’t think the Apollo 8 mission was risk-free, but there were important national, patriotic and research reasons to go ahead.

He estimated that there was about a one in three chance that the crew would not return and the same chance that the mission would succeed and the same chance that the mission would not start over.

Anders said he suspects Christopher Columbus sailed with worse odds.

He recounted how the earth seemed fragile and seemed physically insignificant, yet he was home.

“We were going backwards and upside down, we didn’t really see the Earth or the Sun, and when we turned around and came back and saw the first sunrise on Earth,” he said.

“That was definitely the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb, which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament, rising above this very bright, ugly moonscape, really contrasted.’

Anders was born Oct. 17, 1933, in Hong Kong, according to the New Mexico Museum of Space History, where he was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1983.

At the time, his father was a Navy lieutenant aboard the USS Panay, which was an American gunboat in China’s Yangtze River. Anders and his mother flee during the Japanese attack on Nanking in 1937.

Anders and his wife, Valerie, founded the Heritage Flight Museum in Washington state in 1996. It is now based at Burlington Regional Airport and has 15 aircraft, several antique military vehicles, a library and many artifacts donated by veterans, according to the museum’s website . Two of his sons helped him run it.

The couple moved to Orcas Island, in the San Juan Archipelago, in 1993 and maintain a second home in their hometown of San Diego. They had six children and 13 grandchildren.