Inducted in 1985
First Man To Walk In Space Untethered, 1984
1937 – 2017
Challenger’s February 1984 flight was America’s tenth space shuttle mission and the first spacecraft of any nation to end its celestial travels at the site where it was launched. On February 7, 1984, five days into the mission, Captain Bruce McCandless, Mission Specialist, became the first human to walk in space without a safety line.
After waiting 18 years to make his first space flight, McCandless stepped free from Challenger into the blackness of space for a 90-minute space walk traveling as far as 320 feet from the orbiter. Using a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), McCandless opened a new frontier in practical space walking and revolutionized man’s ability to survive and work in space.