See Bruce McCandless Flying Free in Space

This is, in my opinion, one of the most amazing pictures ever taken by NASA throughout its long years of manned space exploration. Seeing astronaut Bruce McCandless flying hundreds of feet away from any point of contact, backdropped just by Earth's blue skies, is truly a remarkable experience.

One can only stop and wonder what the man was feeling, when flying about 320 feet (about 100 meters) away from any point of contact, on February 12, 1984. His only way home was the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) on his back.

McCandless tested the functionalities on the MMU inside space shuttle Challenger's cargo bay before carrying out this untethered spacewalk. His astronaut colleagues were watching him perplexed as he was moving farther and farther away from them. Click the image for higher resolution.