“My father died in a plane crash in the San Juan Islands,” at the northwest tip of the United States, his son Gregory Anders told the American television channel.
William Anders marked space exploration with an emblematic photo, “Earthrise”, taken during the Apollo 8 mission, the first to orbit the Moon.
In this photograph from Christmas Eve 1968, the blue planet stands out from the darkness, with the lunar surface in the foreground.
He “gave humanity one of the most precious gifts an astronaut could give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped us all see something else: ourselves” , wrote NASA administrator Bill Nelson on X. “We will miss him.”
William Anders “forever changed our vision of our planet and ourselves with his famous photo (…) He inspired me, as well as generations of astronauts”, reacted the former NASA astronaut and US Senator Mark Kelly on the same social network.
The Apollo 8 mission took off in December 1968 with William Anders and two other astronauts, Frank Borman and James Lovell, on board.
Before becoming an astronaut, Bill Anders served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army.
Earlier Friday, local authorities said an older model plane crashed late in the morning near the coast of one of the San Juan Islands in the US state of Washington. An investigation has been opened to determine the circumstances of this accident.
County Sheriff Eric Peter told AFP that teams were searching the area but had not yet found any bodies.
The death of Bill Anders comes a few months after that, at the age of 95, of Frank Borman, the commander of the Apollo 8 mission.
