{"id":36587,"date":"2017-12-23T13:11:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T13:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/astronaut-bruce-mccandless-the-first-person-to\/"},"modified":"2017-12-23T13:11:03","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T13:11:03","slug":"astronaut-bruce-mccandless-the-first-person-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/astronaut-bruce-mccandless-the-first-person-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Bruce McCandless, the first person to fly freely in space, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

He was famously photographed in 1984 flying with a spacewalker\u2019s jetpack, alone in the cosmic blackness above the Earth. He travelled more than 90m (300ft) away from the space shuttle Challenger during the spacewalk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe iconic photo of Bruce soaring effortlessly in space has inspired generations of Americans to believe that there is no limit to the human potential,\u201d senator John McCain said in a statement. The Arizona Republican and McCandless were classmates at the US naval academy.<\/p>\n

Nasa\u2019s Johnson space center said on Friday that McCandless died on Thursday in California. No cause of death was given.<\/p>\n

In an interview in 2006, McCandless said he had not been nervous about the historic spacewalk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was grossly over-trained. 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,\u201d he told the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado.<\/p>\n

During that flight, McCandless and fellow astronaut Robert Stewart pioneered the use of Nasa\u2019s backpack device that allowed astronauts walking in space to propel themselves from the shuttle. Stewart became the second person to fly untethered two hours after McCandless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been told of the quiet vacuum you experience in space, but with three radio links saying, \u2018How\u2019s your oxygen holding out?\u2019, \u2018Stay away from the engines!\u2019 and \u2018When\u2019s my turn?\u2019, it wasn\u2019t that peaceful,\u201d McCandless wrote in the Guardian in 2015.<\/p>\n

But he also wrote: \u201cIt was a wonderful feeling, a mix of personal elation and professional pride: it had taken many years to get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCandless was later part of the 1990 shuttle crew that delivered the Hubble space telescope to orbit. He also served as the mission control capsule communicator in Houston as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969.<\/p>\n

During his spacewalk, McCandless wrote: \u201cMy wife was at mission control, and there was quite a bit of apprehension. I wanted to say something similar to Neil when he landed on the moon, so I said, \u2018It may have been a small step for Neil, but it\u2019s a heck of a big leap for me\u2019. That loosened the tension a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Boston, McCandless graduated from high school in Long Beach, California. He graduated from the naval academy and earned master\u2019s degrees in electrical engineering and business administration.<\/p>\n

As a naval pilot, he took part in the Cuban blockade in the 1962 missile crisis. McCandless was selected for astronaut training during the Gemini program, and he was a backup pilot for the first manned Skylab mission in 1973. After leaving Nasa, McCandless worked for Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cBruce served his country with humility and dignity, and encouraged all of us to reach new heights,\u201d McCain said.<\/p>\n

He is survived by his wife, Ellen Shields McCandless, two children and two grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n
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Bruce McCandless, the Nasa astronaut who was first person to fly freely and untethered in space, has died aged 80.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[2877],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-36587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-the-guradian"],"bylines":[{"id":2877,"name":"The Guradian","slug":"the-guradian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2877,"name":"The Guradian","slug":"the-guradian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36587"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=36587"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=36587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}