Back in February 1984, on the 12th to be exact, a man went for a walk. The man was astronaut Bruce McCandless, the walk was the furthest venture away from the safety of a spaceship that any astronaut had ever attempted.
McCandless was powered by a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack, the kind of transport everyone dreams of whooshing you home when the tube goes down. For non-astronauts, jetpacks are much more cumbersome and less graceful than the one Nasa supplied for this flight.
McCandless is seen here "free-flying" at around 320 feet away from the Orbiter, drifting serenely, yet surely slightly nervously, between Earth and the infinite.
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