Bruce McCandless II

Bruce McCandless II (1937–2017) was an American Navy officer, electrical engineer and NASA astronaut. On his first flight, STS-41-B in February 1984, he made the first untethered spacewalk, flying away from the shuttle Challenger on a Manned Maneuvering Unit. His first spacewalk lasted 6 hours 17 minutes. Years earlier he had given crew input on the Hubble Space Telescope’s hardware and procedures. His second and last flight, STS-31 on Discovery in April 1990, deployed the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. He died in December 2017, aged 80.

Born: 8 June 1937
Died: 21 December 2017
Country: United States
Flights: 2: STS-41-B (1984), STS-31 (1990)
Time in space: 13 days 0 hours

Data as of 2 November 2026. Source: Wikidata (CC0). All people who have flown in space.

Events

Hubble Space Telescope
- Hubble Space Telescope, Space Shuttle
Hubble is a 2.4-metre telescope in low Earth orbit, built so that astronauts could service it. NASA and ESA built it to see the universe without the blur of the atmosphere, and to settle how fast the universe was expanding.
3 videos
- DCODE by Discovery
- NASA Goddard
- Primal Space