A Brief History
On February 7, 1984, two astronauts from the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-B made space exploration history by taking the first untethered space walk outside of their space ship.
Digging Deeper
Not being attached by any sort of lifeline had to be a terrifying prospect, but astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart, both on their first space flight, operated outside the Challenger free of any safety line for over 5 hours.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon announced the NASA Space Shuttle program, an ambitious program sadly remembered for the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but also a program that saw many space exploration firsts and carried astronauts from 16 different countries on 135 flights before being retired in 2011.
Question for students (and subscribers): Would you be willing to take an untethered space walk? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Miller, Roland. The Space Shuttle: A Mission-by-Mission Celebration of NASA’s Extraordinary Spaceflight Program. Artisan, 2022.
Sivolella, Davide. The Untold Stories of the Space Shuttle Program: Unfulfilled Dreams and Missions that Never Flew. Springer, 2022.
The featured image in this article, the STS-41-B mission patch, is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that “NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted“. (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
