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The former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo in 1968, showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space, has died in a plane crash . Retired Major General William Anders was killed on Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. “The family is devastated,” his son Greg Anders said, confirming his father’s body had been recovered. “He was a great pilot, and we will miss him terribly.
Administrator and former senator Bill Nelson said Anders embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. “He travelled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nelson wrote on the social platform X. Anders snapped the photo during the crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, frantically switching from black-and-white to colour film. “Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders said. “There’s the Earth coming up.
’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous voyage yet, and one that set the stage for the Apollo moon landing seven months later. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who is also a retired astronaut, wrote on the social platform, X: “Bill Anders forever changed our perspective of our planet and ourselves with his famous Earthrise photo on Apollo 8.” William Anders said in an 1997
oral history interview that he didn’t think the Apollo 8 mission was risk-free, but there were important national, patriotic and exploration reasons for going ahead. He estimated there was about one-in-three chance that the crew wouldn’t make it back and the same chance the mission would be a success and the same chance that the mission wouldn’t start to begin with. Anders said he suspected Christopher Columbus sailed with worse odds.
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Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders who took iconic Earthrise photo dies in plane crashHis plane plummeted into the water off San Juan Islands in Washington state.
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Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders who took iconic Earthrise photo dies in plane crashHis plane plummeted into the water off San Juan Islands in Washington state.
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Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders who took iconic Earthrise photo dies in plane crashHis plane plummeted into the water off San Juan Islands in Washington state.
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Former Apollo 8 astronaut, known for Earthrise photo, dies in plane crashRetired Maj Gen William Anders, 90, was killed when his plane plummeted off Washington state’s San Juan Islands
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Former astronaut William Anders, who took iconic Earthrise photo, killed in Washington plane crashWilliam Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo, has been killed in a plane crash aged 90.
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Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders dies in plane crash aged 90The 90-year-old was piloting the plane when it crashed in Washington state.
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