The United States first stepped out into the void of space 50 years ago today (June 3).
On June 3, 1965, NASA astronaut Ed White left the safety of his Gemini 4 spacecraft equipped with a spacesuit, a tether and a small gas gun for maneuvering. shows White enjoying the excursion, even as he made spaceflight history.
For about 23 minutes, White floated near the spacecraft with Earth backdropped behind him. His tumbling movements—captured in photos by his commander, Jim McDivitt—are still widely published today. White has described his return to the spacecraft as one of the saddest moments of his life. []
Hundreds of spacewalks (also known as extravehicular , or EVAs) have been done since White’s time. While the first NASA EVA—which came just three months after the , performed by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov—was brief, with no major tasks accomplished aside from getting used to the sensation, it marked a change in the thinking for space work, historian Jennifer Levasseur told .
“There is a turning point between learning how to do things and actually starting to carry out some of the activities we know are going to be required to tasks in space,” said Levasseur, a museum specialist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. []
Specifically, White’s spacewalk previewed challenges that the would later have to overcome, Levasseur said. Fogging in White’s visor pointed to problems with the spacesuit overheating. His difficulties in maneuvering, combined with reports from other astronauts, eventually prompted NASA to install more handrails and anchor points on spacecraft.
Saving SkylabSpace.com partner) . For example, spacewalking to the other vehicle was one of many backup procedures for an Apollo lunar lander returning to its orbiting mate after a moon mission.
But in some ways, Pearlman pointed out, White’s spacewalk made things look too easy. Later Gemini EVAs were designed with the assumption that astronauts could move without challenges, but as tasks were added, several spacewalkers had difficulty holding on to the spacecraft to do their work. []
“In the large sense of history,” Pearlman said, “spacewalking became much more important after Apollo. It literally saved the .”
“Had we not been able to perform spacewalks and do them reliably, then there would have been no way to the station from the damages, and that entire program would have been a loss,” Pearlman said.
Future of spacewalksadvanced even further during NASA’s program, which began flying in the 1980s, with astronauts using manned maneuvering units (jetpacks) to retrieve satellites for repair.
While this practice ceased due to safety concerns following the in 1986, spacewalking still was key to how space exploration developed. Among other milestones, astronauts performed EVAs to repair and upgrade NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, as well as construct and repair the Space Station.
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