Retired American astronaut William Anders, 90, who was part of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, died after his small plane crashed in Puget Sound, Washington state.
Anders died after the small plane he was piloting crashed into Puget Sound near Orcas Island in Washington state on Friday, sparking a fireball as the plane hit the water.
U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest officials said the accident occurred near Orcas Island before 11:45 a.m.
Video footage filmed in the Sound shows the plane flying high in the sky before plummeting as it begins to descend.
Just before the plane began to level off, the plane hit the water at a speed without enough altitude for Anders to stop safely.
Former astronaut William Anders, 90, who had been part of the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, died after crashing his small plane in Puget Sound, near Orcas Island in Washington state, on Friday.
Portrait of the NASA Apollo 8 crew, Florida, December 1968. Pictured, from left, command module pilot James Lovell, lunar module pilot William Anders and Commander Frank Borman.
U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest officials said the accident occurred near Orcas Island before 11:45 a.m. Above, the incredible photo it took of Earth from the moon
The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office detailed how the aircraft was an older model that had been flying north to south when it crashed into the water and sank.
The plane that crashed was a vintage Air Force Mentor Beech T-34A that belonged to Anders, who was a San Juan County resident.
Anders was at the controls when the plane crashed.
Station Bellingham, Air Station Port Angeles, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Coast Guard are responding with search and rescue efforts.
The plane that crashed was a Beech T-34A Mentor
Anders’ plane could be seen seconds from disaster as it plummeted into the Sound
Anders’ mission fifty-six years ago, on Christmas Eve, came after a tumultuous year of murder, riots and war came to a heroic and hopeful end, with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis in live television as they orbited the planet. moon.
Anders’ 1968 mission is considered NASA’s most audacious and perhaps most dangerous undertaking.
To this day, that 1968 mission is considered NASA’s most audacious and perhaps most dangerous undertaking.
That first trip by humans to another world set the stage for the even bigger Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later.
There was an unfathomable and unprecedented risk in putting three men on top of a monstrous new rocket for the first time and sending them to the moon.
The mission was organized in just four months to reach the Moon at the end of the year, before the Soviet Union.
There was a reading from the Old Testament by Major Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.
This view of the rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they arrived from behind the Moon after their fourth orbit around the Moon.
Finally, there was the photo called ‘Earthrise’, which shows our blue and white ball, the home of humanity, rising above the desolate, gray lunar landscape and 240,000 miles away.
Humans had never laid eyes on the far side of the Moon, nor on our planet as a cosmic oasis, completely surrounded by the black void of space.
Half a century later, only 24 American astronauts who flew to the moon have witnessed these wonderful sights in person.
On Christmas Eve 1968, the spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the Moon.
Before going to bed, the first sent to another world took turns reading the first 10 verses of Genesis. Before the flight, it had been left to Frank Borman to find “something appropriate” to say for what was expected to be the largest television audience to date.
“We all tried for quite a long time to figure something out, and it all came out trite or silly,” Borman recalled. Finally, the wife of a friend of a friend came up with the idea for Genesis.
“In the beginning,” Anders read, “God created heaven and earth…”
Borman ended the broadcast by saying: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless you all, all of you on the good Earth.”
On Christmas morning, his spacecraft made its final orbit around the Moon. The engine ignition needed to return them to Earth occurred while the capsule was out of communication with Mission Control in Houston. Lovell broke the nervous silence when the ship reappeared: “Please note that there is a Santa Claus.”
Meanwhile, back in Houston, a limousine driver knocked on Marilyn Lovell’s door and handed her a gift-wrapped mink stole with a card that read: “To Marilyn, Merry Christmas from the man in the moon.” Lovell bought the coat for his wife and arranged for it to be elegantly delivered to her before takeoff.
Ditching occurred in the pre-dawn darkness of December 27, ending the incredible six-day voyage. Time magazine named the three astronauts “Men of the Year.”
It was not until after the return of the astronauts that the importance of their photographs of Earth was understood.
Anders took the iconic Earthrise photograph during the crew’s fourth lunar orbit, frantically switching from black and white to color film to capture the exquisite, fragile beauty of the planet.
‘Oh my God, look at that photo over there!’ -Anders said-. ‘There is the Earth approaching. Wow, how pretty!’
According to Anders, before the flight no one had thought about photographing the Earth. The astronauts were under orders to take photographs of possible landing sites while orbiting 112 kilometers (70 miles) above the moon.
“We came to explore the Moon and what we discovered was the Earth,” Anders likes to say.
His Earthrise photo is a pillar of today’s environmental movement. It remains a legacy of Apollo and the achievements of humanity, said Professor Emeritus John Logsdon of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, forever underscoring the absence of political borders as seen from space.
Anders wondered then – and now – ‘This isn’t a very big place, why can’t we get along?’
Lovell remains amazed by the fact that he could hide the entire Earth behind his thumb.
“More than 3 billion people, mountains, oceans, deserts, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,” he recalled at a recent anniversary celebration at Washington National Cathedral.
Astronaut artist Nicole Stott said the golden anniversary provides an opportunity to reintroduce the world to Earthrise. She and three other former space travelers will hold a celebration at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday, 50 years to the day Apollo 8 was launched.
“I think that image shows us who and where we are in the universe so beautifully,” he said.
In July 1969, Apollo 8 was eclipsed by the moon landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11. But without Apollo 8, George Washington’s Logsdon noted, NASA probably would not have met the deadline set by President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Borman and Anders never flew into space again, and Soviet cosmonauts never reached the moon.
Lovell went on to command the ill-fated Apollo 13, “but that’s another story.” That flight was the most demanding, he said, “but Apollo 8 was the one of exploration, of repeating the Lewis and Clark expedition… to find the new Earth.”
