Bruce McCandless obituary

Astronaut who became the first person to walk in space untetheredIn 1984 the astronaut Bruce McCandless, who has died aged 80, took the world’s breath away by becoming the first person to make an untethered spacewalk. Using a backpack equipped with nitrogen thrusters to move himself around, McCandless floated free in the void from the space shuttle Challenger for around four hours before returning to his colleagues inside. The main aim of the nine-day mission had been to release two commun