Apollo astronaut Bill Anders, who captured one of the most famous images ever recorded in space , has died at age 90. His son, Greg Anders, told NPR his dad died Friday in a plane crash in Washington state. He was piloting the Beech A45 when it crashed into the water off Jones Island.
The National Transportation Safety Board says it's investigating the crash . "Our family is devastated. He was a great man and a great pilot," he told NPR.
In a statement on X , NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Bill Anders "offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration.
We will miss him." Bill Anders flew in space just once. It was a nerve-wracking trip , the first time humans ever left low Earth orbit.
The quarter-million mile flight reached the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, and controllers in Houston wanted to know what the moon looked like up close. Gray. The astronauts thought it just looked gray — then mission commander Frank Borman rolled the capsule over and they got a different perspective.
"Borman rotated the spacecraft, turned it around and I was the first to see the Earth coming up and I remarked, 'Wow, look at that!'" Anders told NPR in 2015. Earth was blue and white, rising above the barren lunar horizon. The crew had been taking pictures for use in planning future lunar landings, but they were mostly black-and.