There are many scary things to encounter in space, from mysterious giant voids 250 to 330 million light-years wide to tiny water droplets in your spacesuit that can easily suffocate you. Sometimes even seeing photos of things in this endless space can scare people.
However, there is one among these photos; It deserves the title of “scariest space photo”. That title belongs to a photograph of astronaut Bruce McCandless II taken from the space shuttle Challenger on February 7, 1984.
On February 7, 1984, Bruce and his friend Bob Stewart strapped themselves into their Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) and performed an untethered spacewalk while aboard the space shuttle at approximately 28,900 kilometers per hour. On the other hand, Bruce was also entitled to be the first person to perform this unconnected spacewalk.
Of course, moving at a speed of 28,900 kilometers per hour sounds scary, but for astronauts, these speeds do not feel like that at all. Compared to Challenger, MMU allows astronauts to propel themselves at smoother speeds using nitrogen.
While it may have been a frightening sight for people who preferred to be firmly tethered to Earth, or at least tethered to a spacecraft that would keep you from dying in space, for the first human to fly untethered, the feeling felt was one of professional accomplishment.
“It was a wonderful feeling, a mixture of personal joy and professional pride: it has taken many years to get to this point,” McCandless told the Guardian.
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