William Anders, a NASA astronaut who was part of the Apollo 8 crew who became the first three people to circle the moon, has died in a plane crash.
God Speed Bill (he took this photograph)
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
My “dad passed in an aircraft incident in the San Juan Islands,” Anders told CNN Friday evening.
The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release an aircraft went down off the coast of Jones Island.
San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter in an email told CNN the only update he had was “the dive team arrived on scene and are currently conducting their search.”
Anders served as a fighter pilot in all-weather interception squadrons of the Air Defense Command in California and Iceland, according to NASA and the US Naval Academy.
While at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico, Anders was responsible for managing nuclear power reactor shielding and radiation effects programs, his NASA biography states.
From the spacecraft, Anders captured an iconic image of Earth showing the moon’s surface in the foreground during the Apollo 8 flight on Christmas Eve 1968, titled “Earthrise.”
Saved 76% of original text.
