Footloose: the image of Bruce McCandless' spacewalk two decades ago still amazes. It was the first untethered walk ever--and was among the last.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-AUG-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution

It may not have been a giant leap for mankind, but Bruce McCandless II took an awfully big step on February 7, 1984, when he ventured out of the shuttle Challenger and became the first person to fly freely in space, untethered to a craft. Strapped into a jet pack, McCandless traveled more than 300 feet from the mother ship, with the blue Earth glowing 150 nautical miles below. Inside the shuttle, Robert Gibson peered through a Hasselblad camera lens. "Holy smokes," Gibson recalls thinking, "what an image this is."

Today, the photograph that Gibson took is as astonishing as ever, ranking among NASA's top five or six most-requested images. McCandless calls it "an icon for human triumph over gravity or triumph over nature."...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.