The astronaut William “Bill” Alison Anders of the Apollo 8the first mission in lunar orbit and in which an iconic photo of the Earth was taken above our satellite, died this Friday at 90 years when the small plane he was traveling in crashed near Seattle (USA), as confirmed by NASA.
William “Bill” Anders has died at the age of 90 after the small plane he was traveling in fell into the sea
The United States Coast Guard Pacific Northwest Division and the San Juan Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about the accident, which occurred between Orcas and Johns Islands (Washington State)about an old model of a small plane that sank at Fall into water.
“In 1968, during Apollo 8, Will 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 highlighted. Bill NelsonNASA administrator, who has also paid tribute to him with a video.
On December 24, 1968, Anders, with the astronauts Frank Bormanwho was the mission commander, and Jim Lovell They became the first to orbit the moon and the first to witness that image that was captured in the famous photo.
The iconic photograph Earthrise
While the spacecraft was rotating, Anders took a photograph that has become iconic: Earthrise, showing the Earth rising above the horizon of the Moon.
Iconic ‘Earthrise’ photo. /NASA
The photo allowed the planet to be seen from a great distance for the first time. “When the Earth appeared above the lunar horizon, that was when we really I was impressed by how much more delicate and colorful it was.“Anders said in a 2018 interview on the show Today Show of NBC on the 50th anniversary of that innovative mission.
After 25 hours of flight, the astronaut began taking photographs, he explained during the interview, where he also commented that he believed he had a one in three chance of not surviving the Apollo 8 mission.
Backup pilot on Gemini XI and Apollo 11
Anders, who was born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1933, was also a backup pilot for the mission Gemini XI and the mission Apollo 11 in which the first humans landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.
A crater on the Moon is named after ‘Anders’ Earthrise’
Before being selected to be an astronaut in 1964, he was a fighter pilot in the Air Force and had four sons and two daughters.
In 2018, the International Astronomical Union commemorated the anniversary of the iconic astronaut photograph by naming a 25-mile-diameter lunar crater after Anders’ Earthrise.
Five years earlier, with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the NASA Scientific Visualization Study It also recreated that historic moment exactly as the astronauts saw it when they took the photograph.
