On February 7, 1984, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II performed the first untethered spacewalk.
An incredible photograph of the event shows McCandless floating in space, entirely alone, with Earth some 250 miles below.
McCandless used a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) — a nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled backpack — to carry himself 300 feet (about 90 meters) from the space shuttle Challenger that had brought him to orbit on the STS-41B mission.
“It may have been one small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me,” McCandless quipped shortly before attempting the feat.
In an article marking the 40th anniversary of the 82-minute solo adventure, NASA said that many agency officials had been concerned about the use of a self-propelled backpack in space, adding that spacewalkers usually used special cables to connect themselves to the shuttle, in the same way that those at the International Space Station conduct spacewalks today.
Up until his death in 2017 at the age of 80, McCandless was often asked about the unusual experience, which was captured on film by NASA astronaut Robert L. Gibson using a Hasselblad camera.
“I was grossly over-trained,” Boston-born McCandless said. “I was just anxious to get out there and fly. I felt very comfortable … It got so cold my teeth were chattering and I was shivering, but that was a very minor thing.”
McCandless said that he’d been told of “the quiet vacuum you experience in space but with three radio links saying, ‘How’s your oxygen holding out?’, ‘Stay away from the engines!’ and ‘When’s my turn?’, it wasn’t that peaceful.”
But he also said the experience was “a wonderful feeling, a mix of personal elation and professional pride. It had taken many years to get to that point.”
A couple of hours after McCandless’s flight, fellow astronaut Robert Stewart used the backpack to perform the same feat and become the second person to fly untethered in space.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.