Author: Robert Mittendorf / Source: bellinghamherald
On Christmas Eve 50 years ago, astronaut William “Bill” Anders — an Air Force pilot with connections to Bellingham — snapped one of the most famous photographs in history as he and two other members of the first lunar mission watched planet Earth loom above the moon’s horizon.
“We went all that way to discover the moon and what we really discovered was the Earth,” Bill Anders said by email last week through his son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders of Bellingham.
Apollo 8’s goal was to prove that a spacecraft could fly to the moon and back, paving the way for Apollo 11’s successful landing seven months later.
“Earthrise,” as the photograph would be called, is officially NASA image AS08-14-2383.
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Apollo 8 was Bill Anders’ only spaceflight, but it was the first manned craft to leave low Earth orbit.
Bill Anders, who now lives on Orcas Island, was also the backup pilot for Gemini 11 and backup command module pilot for Apollo 11, the first lunar landing.
After leaving NASA, Bill Anders founded the Heritage Flight Museum at Bellingham International Airport in 1996 with several vintage planes and has hosted several visits from famed World War II bombers.
Astronaut William A. Anders, who was the lunar module pilot for the Apollo 8 mission, is shown inside the spacecraft during lunar orbit in December 1968.
NASA Courtesy to The Bellingham Herald
Heritage Flight Museum moved to Skagit Regional Airport in 2013 and still provides local residents with a glimpse of aviation history.
In an interview with The Bellingham Herald last week, Greg Anders said his father, 85,…
The post ‘We went all that way to discover the moon and what we really discovered was the Earth’ appeared first on FeedBox.