Astronaut William Anders (Hong Kong, 1933) has died at the age of 90, after an accident in the small plane in which he was traveling. This former United States Air Force officer went down in NASA history by being part of Apollo 8, the first mission to orbit the Earth and the Moon, along with Frank Borman (died in November 2023) and Jim Lovell (commander of the Apollo 13 mission and immortalized in cinema by Tom Hanks in the film about that operation)
Anders was the first man to share with the world an image of the Earth seen from outside. His was the first photo of the planet seen from lunar orbit, an iconic snapshot that became a symbol of hope: the Earth above the horizon of the Moon, at dawn, which was baptized as ‘Earthrise’.
«In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered humanity one of the most profound gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped us all see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and purpose of exploration. We will miss him,” wrote Senator Bill Nelson, administrator of NASA, in an X message accompanied by that photograph.
The circumstances of the accident that cost the life of Anders, 90, are still unclear. According to CNN, the United States Coast Guard and the San Juan Sheriff’s Office responded to an emergency call after an accident between Orcas Island and Johns Island, in Washington state. Some neighbors had seen how “an old-looking plane” had fallen and sank into the water.
According to the Associated Press, it was the Beechcraft T-34 Mentor, the small plane owned by Anders, which supposedly he was driving himself.
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The first man to see the dawn of the Earth and ended up as a nuclear leader
NASA’s historic second manned mission, Apollo 8, served to take an almost definitive step in that historic space race between the USSR and the United States. The voyage of the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri gagarin on Vostok 1 in 1961, which marked the arrival of humans to the outer border of planet Earth for the first time in history, required a coup of authority from the Americans.
With the country still knocked out by its entry into the Vietnam War, the turbulent presidency inherited from Lyndon B. Johnson after the murder of John F. Kennedy and the recent arrival of Richard Nixon to the White House, the Apollo 8 mission represented a huge media blow in the Cold War in favor of the Western bloc. And there Anders’ photo had capital importance: he managed to give the Republican president an image that Moscow would have dreamed of.
Beyond the geopolitical implications it had, ‘Earthrise’, a photo taken on Christmas Eve 1968, was the first great image that demonstrated that man could overcome limits never seen before.
“When the Earth appeared above the lunar horizon, that was when I was really impressed by how delicate and colorful it was,” he recalled in an interview on the ‘Today Show’ in 2018, where he also recalled the risk he took on that mission: he stated that he had one chance in three of not surviving.
Not only did he do it, but his career after this mission led him to be responsible for the National Aeronautics and Space Council, the United States Atomic Energy Commission and as president of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the presidency of Gerald Ford. His relationship with nuclear energy It had already served him to be one of the first men at NASA in charge of the environmental control systems of manned capsules, the effects of space radiation and designing a way to reduce its danger.
At the end of the 70s he moved to the private sector in General Electricwhere he became vice president and general manager of the nuclear productsand later joined the Textron conglomerate to end up being president of General Dynamics since 1991 and 1994, when he retired.
He leaves six children, four boys and two girls.
