アポロ８号の飛行士、飛行機事故死　「地球の出」写真を撮影

【ワシントンＡＦＰ＝時事】５５年前に「地球の出」写真を撮影したことで知られる米国の元宇宙飛行士ウィリアム・アンダースさん（９０）が７日、飛行機事故で死亡した。家族が明らかにした。（写真は米国の元宇宙飛行士ウィリアム・アンダースさん）
　息子が米メディアに語ったところによると、アンダースさんが操縦していた小型機がワシントン州沖で墜落した。搭乗者はアンダースさんのみだったという。
　保安官はＡＦＰに対し、現場の捜索が行われているが、遺体はまだ見つかっていないと述べた。
　アンダースさんは１９６８年、フランク・ボーマン、ジェームス・ラベル両氏と共にアポロ８号に搭乗し、人類史上初めて月周回軌道に到達した。月面に降り立つことはなかったが、月を１０回周回した後、１９６８年１２月２７日に無事地球に帰還した。
　アンダースさんは月周回軌道から、青く輝く地球が月の地平線から暗い宇宙に昇る写真を撮影。この写真は「地球の出」と呼ばれ、重要な歴史写真にしばしば選出され、ライフ誌の「世界を変えた１００枚の写真」にも選ばれている。
　「地球の出」写真のオリジナルは２０２２年、デンマークの首都コペンハーゲンで競売にかけられ、１万１８００ユーロ（現在のレートで約２００万円）で落札された。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2024/06/10-17:01）

William Anders, the former US astronaut who took the historic Earthrise photo from space over 55 years ago, died in a plane crash on Friday at the age of 90, his family said.
Anders had been piloting a small plane which crashed off the coast of Washington state on Friday morning, his son told US media. Anders was alone in the plane.
His body was later recovered by a dive team, The Seattle Times reported, quoting a Coast Guard spokesperson.
A member of the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, Anders became one of the first humans to orbit the Moon, along with fellow Americans Frank Borman and James Lovell.
The crew circled the Moon 10 times without landing, before successfully returning to Earth on December 27, 1968.
On one of the lunar orbits, Anders captured a photo of the bright blue Earth against the vast darkness of space, with the Moon's cratered surface in the foreground.
We'd been going backwards and upside down, didn't really see the Earth or the Sun, and when we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earthrise, he said in a 1997 NASA oral history interview.
(T)hat certainly was, by far, the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape.
The Earthrise photo is frequently listed in roundups of key historical images, and was included in Life Magazine's book 100 Photographs that Changed The World.
An original version of the photo sold at a Copenhagen auction in 2022 for 11,800 euros.
In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give, NASA chief Bill Nelson wrote on social media platform X.
He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. We will miss him, Nelson added.
- 'To the Moon to discover Earth' -
The San Juan County Sheriff's Office in Washington state said in a statement that local authorities received a report around noon on Friday that an older model plane was flying from north to south then went into the water and sunk.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash.
Born October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong, Anders graduated from the US Naval Academy and later earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering.
After his time as an astronaut, Anders later held various technology-related government positions, notably becoming the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and later serving as the US ambassador to Norway.
In the early 1990s, he headed up the US defense and aerospace company General Dynamics as CEO and chairman, before retiring.
In a 2015 interview with Forbes, Anders said his Earthrise image had captured so much attention because it showed the planet's beauty and fragility -- and helped kick start the environmental movement.
But he was also surprised that the public seemed to have lost the memory of the space mission that produced the photo.
It's curious to me that the press and people on the ground have kind of forgotten our history-making voyage, and what's symbolic of the flight now is the 'Earthrise' picture, Anders said.
Here we came all the way to the moon to discover Earth.
Of the Apollo 8 members, only Lovell is still alive.
Borman died in November 2023 at the age of 95.
Lovell, 96, was also a member of the Apollo 13 mission that was meant to land on the Moon, but experienced a near-catastrophe that was later made into a Hollywood film.
The last time humans set foot on the Moon was in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, but NASA has set its sights on sending new astronauts, including the first woman and person of color, in the coming years.