The “Earthrise” photo was an unexpected surprise. Anders’ main task during the Moon’s orbit was to take photos of the lunar surface.
On the third pass, they saw Earth appearing on the horizon.
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there,” he said during the space mission. There’s the Earth emerging. Wow, that’s beautiful.
Borman, the commander, joked that he shouldn’t take the photo because it wasn’t in the flight plan.
“When Earth appeared over the lunar horizon, that’s when it really struck me how much more delicate and colorful Earth was,” Anders said in a statement. interview on the “TODAY” program in 2018 to mark the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking mission.
Anders said in that interview that he believed he had a one in three chance of not surviving the Apollo 8 mission.
After about 25 hours of flying, Anders started taking photos. A photo of the entire Earth from space in color, the first ever, is Anders’ favorite photo.
Anders was born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1933. He had four sons and two daughters.
He was also the backup pilot for the Gemini XI mission and the Apollo 11 mission, in which the first humans landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, who is a former astronaut, wrote on X that Anders was an inspiration.
“Bill Anders forever changed our perspective of our planet and ourselves with his famous photo of the birth of the Earth on Apollo 8. He inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends,” Kelly wrote.
Anders was a fighter pilot in the Air Force in interceptor squadrons and was selected to be an astronaut in 1964. He joked to NBC’s Harry Smith in 2018: “I’m probably the best fighter pilot in the world, but we don’t talk about that.”
“I have to say that even today, if I look up and see that little crescent moon, my hair kind of sticks up a little on the back of my neck,” Anders said then.
CORRECTION (June 7, 2024, 10:45 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated when the Apollo 11 moon landing occurred. It was July 20, 1969, not July 24.
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