SEATTLE — Retired Major General William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo in 1968 that showed the planet as a shadowy blue marble from space was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone crashed into the waters off Washington state’s San Juan Islands collapsed. He was 90. His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
“The family is devastated,” Greg Anders said. “He was a great pilot and we will miss him terribly.”
William Anders has said that the photo was his most important contribution to the space program, given the ecological philosophical impact it had, and allowed the Apollo 8 command module and service module to work.
The photo, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photos in modern history because of the way it changed the way people viewed the planet. The photo is said to have sparked the global environmental movement because it shows how fragile and isolated the Earth looks from space.
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, who is also a retired NASA astronaut, wrote on the social platform generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends.”
About 11:40 a.m., a report came in that an older model plane had crashed into the water and sank near the north end of Jones Island, San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter said.
According to the Federal Aviation Association, only the pilot was aboard the Beech A45 aircraft at the time.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are investigating the crash.
William Anders said in 1997 Oral History of NASA interview that he felt the Apollo 8 mission was not without risks, but that there were important national, patriotic, and exploration reasons to proceed. 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 be a success and the same chance that the mission would not start in the first place. He said he suspected Christopher Columbus sailed with worse odds.
He talked about how the Earth looked fragile and seemingly physically insignificant, yet was a home.
“We had gone backwards and upside down and hadn’t really seen the Earth or the sun, and as we spun around and came around, we saw the first rising of the Earth,” he said. “That was definitely by far the most impressive thing. It was really a contrast to see this very delicate, colorful sphere, which looked like a Christmas tree ornament to me, appearing above this very stark, ugly moonscape.
Anders and his wife Valerie founded the Heritage Flight Museum in Washington State in 1996. Now located at a regional airport in Burlington, it features 15 aircraft, several antique military vehicles, a library and many artifacts donated by veterans, according to the museum website. Two of his sons helped him run it.
The couple moved to Orcas Island, in the San Juan archipelago, in 1993 and had a second home in their hometown of San Diego, according to a biography on the museum’s website. They had six children and thirteen grandchildren.