From the history of space exploration there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of images. But there is one that stands out above all, and that could well be considered as the most spectacular photo taken of an astronaut. The protagonist: Bruce McCandless II.
In that image the NASA astronaut appears floating in space, untethered, with planet Earth in the background.
It was taken on February 7, 1984 and, to the man in the photograph, it seemed “a wonderful feeling, a mixture of personal euphoria and professional pride. “It had taken me many years to get to that point.”
Bruce McCandless II was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 8, 1937. A naval officer and aviator, as well as an electrical engineer, he became a NASA astronaut in 1966. being the youngest of the group at just 28 years old.
It would carry out two space missions: the STS-41-B in 1984 and the STS-31 in 1990. Although STS-41-B can be considered the most historic, after performing the untethered spacewalk, the second also had its epic.
On STS-31, McCandless served as pilot of the space shuttle Discovery. during the launch of the Hubble space telescope.
But let’s focus on his most notable feat, that of February 7, 1984. After 300 hours of testing on Earth, Bruce McCandless II embarked on his untethered spacewalk.
For this he used a space suit Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), moving away from the space shuttle and floating freely. This ride lasted six hours and 45 minutes.
“This photograph, taken by Robert Gibson from the ferry, It’s beautiful, partly because the sun shines directly on me.” he narrated in an interview with The Guardian. “That’s why I have my visor down, although if you look closely, you can make out some of my features.”
“It’s also one of its attractions: my anonymity means that people can imagine themselves doing the same thing,” he recalled. “In visitor centers they usually have life-size cardboard versions with the visor cut out, so people can look through them. As Neil (Armstrong, the first man on the Moon) said in 1969, I represented humanity up there.”
Could something similar be done today? She told The Guardian: “An untethered spacewalk like this would be unlikely today, with the shuttle program over, although NASA is now working on an advanced version of the MMU for asteroid exploration.”
Astronaut Bruce McCandless II died on December 21, 2017, at 80 years of age, in Los Angeles, California.