Local

Honoring the legacy of Bill Anders

Bill Anders, a legend in the aerospace world is being remembered following a tragic plane crash near Orcas Island that killed him at the age of 90.

Even if you didn’t know the name, Bill Anders, he almost certainly helped shape the way you view our planet.

He was one of three men who first traveled around the moon as part of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.

During that Apollo 8 mission Anders captured the photo named “Earthrise” It’s the first photo of Earth from the Moon.

Anders devoted his life to flying, spending time in some kind of aircraft in 8 different decades.

KIRO 7 spoke with Steven Barber who has built monuments for several of the Apollo missions and he says though Anders’s death is tragic, he died doing what he loved.

“As horrible as it is there is a poetic magnificence to it, that he was a man that was in zero gravity for days upon days taking the greatest picture in the history of mankind, and at the end of his life, gravity pulled him back into Earth so there is this juxtaposition to that,” Barber said.

Barber recently finished up a Sally Ride monument, she was the first American woman to fly in space and is working on a monument for the Apollo 8 mission and hopes to unveil it in a museum soon.

0