It may have been one small step for Neil [Armstrong], but it’s a heck of a big leap for me” – Bruce McCandless II⁣ ⁣

 It may have been one small step for Neil [Armstrong], but it’s a heck of a big leap for me” – Bruce McCandless II⁣ :

⁣Forty years ago today, an astronaut left his spacecraft without tethers or umbilicals for the very first time. Astronaut Bruce McCandless II became the first astronaut to move in space unattached to a craft, during this first “field” tryout of a nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).⁣

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Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson, the flight’s pilot, was the only one on the crew that “had absolutely nothing to do” as McCandless made his way out into space, so he picked up a Hasselblad camera and began documenting the events. When he first looked through the camera’s viewfinder, he could not believe what an incredible sight it was to see McCandless floating free above the Earth. Gibson wanted to capture what he was seeing and remembered how meticulous he was. For each photograph he took three light meter readings and checked the focus four times. In the crew’s photography training he learned that an off-kilter horizon looked wrong and was not pleasing to the eye. That presented a slight problem because Challenger was at a 28.5-degree inclination, so he “tilted the camera to put the horizon level in the pictures.”⁣

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Image description: Astronaut McCandless II appears as a tiny figure clad in a white spacesuit surrounded by the blackness of space. Earth is visible in the bottom third of the photo.⁣

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Credit: NASA / Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson⁣

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08 February 2024