NASA astronaut first to spacewalk without tethers dies at 80

Former NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless first person to fly untethered in space, passed away Thursday. No cause of death was given. He was 80.

A NASA release remembered McCandless, a retired U. S. Navy captain, as one of the 19 astronauts selected by the space agency in April 1966. In 1984, he performed the famous spacewalk — during which he “didn’t use restrictive tethers and umbilicals”— and in 1990 he helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.

Regarding the famous spacewalk, he wrote in The Guardian in 2015: "I wanted to say something similar to Neil [Armstrong] when he landed on the moon, so I said, 'It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.'" McCandless logged more than 312 hours in space, including four hours of flight time using the manoeuvring unit outside the space shuttle.

Among the awards and honors received by McCandless are the Legion of Merit, American Expeditionary Service Medal, NASA Space Flight Medal, and NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal.

He was also awarded one patent for the design of a tool tethering system that was used during shuttle spacewalks.

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