Watch the video above: NASA celebrates 50 years of spacewalks.
TORONTO – Soaring hundreds of kilometres above Earth, tethered to the Canadarm as you move 27,500 km/h, looking down at the home of more than seven billion people. It’s just another day at the office.
The first — and arguably bravest — person to venture out in the vacuum of space was Russian cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on March 18, 1965.
Three months later, on June 3, 1965, NASA astronaut Ed White exited his Gemini IV spacecraft into the coldness of space becoming the first American to conduct a spacewalk.
“This is the greatest experience,” White said at the end of the historic mission which lasted about 20 minutes. “It’s just tremendous.”
Since then, a total of 300 men and women have ventured into that potentially deadly environment to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, conduct repairs on the International Space Station as well as other missions.
In 2013, we were reminded about the danger of spacewalking: an hour into a walk with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano reported a buildup of water inside his helmet. Initially, Parmitano thought it was sweat, but it was far more dangerous than that — about a litre of water had leaked inside his helmet. Parmitano almost drowned.
There have been three Canadian spacewalkers: Chris Hadfield was the first in 2001, Steve McLean in 2006 and David Williams in 2007.
And though it may seem that we don’t have a lot of Canadian representation out there, don’t be fooled: our Canadarm has been critical in a great many walks.
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