Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped one particular of the most famous pictures taken in outer place, has died in a aircraft crash at the age of 90.

Officials say a small aircraft he was traveling crashed into the sea off Washington point out.

Anders’ son Greg verified that his father’s overall body was recovered on Friday afternoon.

“The relatives is devastated. He was a wonderful pilot. He will be missed,” a assertion from the family members reads.

Anders – who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission – took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one particular of the most memorable and inspirational pictures of Earth from house.

Taken on Xmas Eve in the course of the 1968 mission, the initially crewed room flight to leave Earth and access the Moon, the photo exhibits the world growing over the horizon from the barren lunar surface area.

Anders afterwards explained it as his most significant contribution to the house programme.

The impression is greatly credited with motivating the world-wide environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an yearly party to market activism and consciousness of caring for the world.

Talking of the moment, Anders said: “We arrived all this way to examine the Moon, and the most essential detail that we found was the Earth.”

Officers reported that Anders’ aircraft crashed at all around 11:40PDT (1940BST).

The US Countrywide Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported the 90-yr-previous was flying a Beechcraft A A 45 – also recognised as a T-34. The company claimed that the airplane crashed about 80ft (25m) from the coastline of Jones Island.

Witness Philip Human being informed King-Television set in Seattle that he saw the crash.

The aircraft began doing what appeared to be a loop and became inverted, he told the community.

“I could not believe that what I was looking at in entrance of my eyes,” Individual advised the area information station. “It appeared like some thing ideal out of a film or distinctive outcomes. With the significant explosion and flames and every thing.”

Footage that allegedly captured the aircraft crash appears to display an effort to pull up at the past next, ahead of its the surface of the h2o and results in being a fiery wreck.

BBC Information has not verified the video.

Anders also served as the backup pilot to the Apollo 11 mission, the name of the work that led to the very first Moon landing on July 24, 1969.

Following Anders’ retirement from the house programme in 1969, the previous astronaut mainly worked in the aerospace sector for many a long time. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a 12 months in the 1970s.

But he is greatest remembered for the Apollo 8 mission and the iconic photograph he took from space.

“In 1968, throughout Apollo 8, Invoice Anders available to humanity amid the deepest of presents an astronaut can give. He travelled to the threshold of the Moon and served all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nasa Administrator Monthly bill Nelson reported in a statement.

In a earlier interview, he explained taking it just after currently being specified “a tiny bit of images coaching”.

He explained: “We ended up in lunar orbit, upside down and likely backwards so for the initially a number of revolutions we did not see the Earth and then we twisted the spacecraft so it was likely ahead and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I observed this colour – it was stunning.

“So I just took a shot, moved it took a shot, moved it.”

Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who now serves as a US Senator for the condition of Arizona, claimed in a write-up on X, previously Twitter, that Anders “encouraged me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My ideas are with his family and buddies”.