Forty years ago, an astronaut left his spacecraft for the first time without tethers or umbilical cords. Astronaut Bruce McCandless II became the first astronaut to move in space without being tethered to a vehicle during this first "field" test of a nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled backpack device called the Manned Manoeuvring Unit (MMU).

The flight's pilot, Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson, was the only one on the crew with "nothing to do" as McCandless made his way into space, so he picked up a Hasselblad camera and began documenting the events. When he first looked through the camera's viewfinder, he couldn't believe what an incredible sight it was to see McCandless floating freely above the Earth. Gibson wanted to capture what he saw and remembered how meticulous he was. He took three light meter readings for each photograph and checked the focus four times. He had learnt in the crew's photography training that the horizon line looked wrong and was not pleasing to the eye. This posed a minor problem because Challenger was on a 28.5-degree inclination, so he "tilted the camera to get the horizon line to line up in the photos."

Image description:

Astronaut McCandless II appears as a small figure in a white spacesuit surrounded by the blackness of space. Earth is visible in the lower third of the photograph.

"It may have been a small step for Neil Armstrong, but it's a big leap for me." - Bruce McCandless II