STS-41B: The First Untethered Spacewalk | Bruce McCandless MMU Historic Space Shuttle Mission

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:05]our patch. The hardest thing in the whole mission was to figure out what the patch was going to be like.

[00:00:12]And the night before launch, going out launch morning after breakfast, everybody anxious to get strapped into the vehicle.

[00:00:26]We did have to get used to uh getting up very early to support the early schedule.

[00:00:35]The pad 39 beautiful scene the orbiter launch morning coming up to thrust. Three main engines igniting million and a half pounds of thrust roughly here. Then plus the SRBs 4.4 million pounds of vehicle pushed by roughly 7 million pounds of thrust.

[00:01:03]It was a exciting ride for us. The uh there was a lot of racket shake, rattle and roll here. Very rapid uh turn or roll maneuver that is to head down range.

[00:01:19]I think everybody uh really enjoyed this first stage first stage flight. That's the camera doing that. That wasn't us.

[00:01:32]>> Sort of thing you'd like to do uh over and over again. Believe me, this going into orbit, we have uh two uh representatives here in Congress uh observing this.

[00:01:51]And we're almost to the the place uh where we finish first stage flight, jettison the SRBs, and continue on. I think we had some cloud cover in the way there. There were some winds at altitude that really uh blew around our smoke trail. There go the SRBs and then we felt a very smooth electric drive which took us into orbit in 8 and 1/2 minutes. And here we are with the doors open.

[00:02:19]This is uh getting ready for the West Star deployment.

[00:02:23]And Ron, you might like to carry on with this. We got into the Westar deployment on the first day. It was our first major activity and things ticked along quite well throughout the entire deploy. These are the final moments of terminal sequence. All the spacecraft is armed.

[00:02:38]The deployment is armed and we see a perfectly uh smooth deployment, stable satellite. All systems just look perfect and we were absolutely uh pleased with what we saw with the west star deployment.

[00:02:51]We tracked it out for many many minutes after the deploy as with the later deployment.

[00:02:57]This is going into the uh ren the IRT deploy. I think we're showing the lower part of the camera. Watch the IRT.

[00:03:05]That's the last we saw of it with TV. We eventually picked it up with uh 16 mm as you see here. And uh Bruce, you might or Bob, you might want to pick it up here.

[00:03:13]>> Yeah, it was supposed to deploy a pair of packing staves after 50 seconds and then inflate to a 6ft diameter sphere after 80 seconds. Instead, about 6 and 1/2 minutes after we uh deployed it, it exploded. And this is the fragment that we wound up tracking with the radar uh out to some 50,000 ft.

[00:03:33]Bob, >> this is the Palapa deploy. And like the West Star, it was absolutely nominal from all on board indications. We were very careful to do a lot of spec checks and uh looked very carefully because we'd known about the problem with the West Star. Uh we saw absolutely nothing on board that was wrong. Satellite spun up smoothly as you can see here. And just like the west star, it came out absolutely stable.

[00:03:57]And as far as we're concerned, we had a a good bird going at this point.

[00:04:03]Uh from about this point uh on as the [clears throat] satellite clears the tail, we lose any uh insight into what's happening on the top. So we were asking the ground if we could observe u omni antenna deployment, which we could not.

[00:04:16]This is the uh TV that we picked up of the parig kick motor burned right here.

[00:04:20]That ring that you see going out. uh we started thinking something is wrong. But but on board we just didn't want to let ourselves believe that it had happened to us twice in a row. So we just uh watched this thing uh go dimmer and dimmer uh hoping that we had lost it in a in a a cloud of rocket exhaust or something like that. And uh we stayed on this picture for quite some time afterward hope looking for some indication that uh the motor was still burning. might add that we use the RMS camera to pick up that burn on the last sequence as we watch uh Vance Bruce the mid deck.

[00:04:58]Ron will show you a little bit here what uh zero G's like as you've seen before.

[00:05:05]I might add that's a North Carolina Aggie, not a Texas Aggie.

[00:05:08]>> This is a Go Navy subsatellite that we devised on board. I I want to I want to comment that they did this after I was in bed on the last night, so they didn't give me a chance to reclamor.

[00:05:19]>> Yeah, the rose in there represents the Rose Bowl where the Army Navy game was played this year.

[00:05:24]>> This [clears throat] shows working out on the treadmill. Uh we were very fond of the treadmill for uh getting your heart rate worked up uh and and getting a little bit of exercise up there. The zero gravity is just too easy on your body and you need to keep doing some of that.

[00:05:39]There we have some in cabin machines. On the right is our little computer spock that told us where we were over the ground at all times. Bob is uh working with that at the same time uh drinking out of a drink drink bag.

[00:05:54]Here you have a I don't know who's upside down. It's either It's either me or the photographer. Ron and I were two out of three, so we were probably right side up. It >> turns out by this time in a flight, it doesn't matter who's upside down.

[00:06:10]We just assume sit on the ceiling to eat lunch is not.

[00:06:16]>> Ron is having an orange drink. And here we have uh Bob at the galley. Little KP little dishwashing chores after the meal.

[00:06:25]>> Turn out that this galley is a a fine idea. It's a good It's a little bit easier to prepare food with it than than it was in the past. There you see our trash bag or one of them.

[00:06:39]Just like at home, I have to have a a waste basket.

[00:06:47]By the end of the mission, there were literally trash bags floating around the cockpit. And >> the alien creeping into the picture at the upper part of the screen is one pre-b breathing army lieutenant colonel.

[00:07:02]And we ran the cabin pressure from 14.7 down to 10.2 PSI about a day before the EVA so that Bob and I could then depressurize from 10.2 down to 4.3 in the suit without risk of the bends. It greatly uh improved the flow of EVA operations and I was even able to work on the checklist some while pre-b breathing with the launch and entry helmet.

[00:07:27]>> Pre- breathing in the helmet gives you quite a bit of freedom of motion in the vehicle. So it's a lot nicer than hanging on the wall for 3 hours in the suit.

[00:07:35]>> That's [clears throat] a little sound slate. A lot of movie production, big movie production going on in the on this flight.

[00:07:43]>> This is preparation for EVA. Go ahead.

[00:07:46]Uh >> yeah, here we are preparing for EVA.

[00:07:50]Having done the liquid cooling and ventilation garments uh in space, you put your pants on both legs at the same time. We've got that on another movie camera, but not in this footage. The hatch leads into the airlock, which is [clears throat] a structure about 5t in diameter and six feet high that can be depressurized independently of the main cabin and has another hatch on the backside that leads out into the payload bay uh that you'll see in a couple minutes. There's Bob applying an antifog to the inside of his helmet.

[00:08:18]>> This is a view looking from the airlock out into the mid deck. Advance was outside giving us uh reading the checklist to us as we were preparing.

[00:08:27]D the suits >> and we got to look at what it looks like with Bruce and Bob doing their equipment prep, EMU preps for the EVA.

[00:08:42]Preparation for the EVA went all very uh well, completely nominal.

[00:08:49]All the check there are many many more checkouts on the suits now than we used to have and they were they were flawless.

[00:08:58]This is coming out the the hatch. That was the outer thermal hatch. The inner one having the structural hatch having been opened a few minutes earlier.

[00:09:06]Basically, we came out and picked up a 35- ft self-ending tether reel right above the hatch. The task uh you see me doing here, and then [clears throat] separated left and right to start on our respective tasks. Uh my first task was getting the the port side MMU ready to fly and uh checking it out and starting into a check flight followed by some translations up and down the the payload bay and some longer range translations.

[00:09:36]The light on the back of the MMU is a locator light in case we got to flying around in the darkness so Vance could keep an eye on where we were.

[00:09:47]Basically, [clears throat] we were very pleased with the way the uh MMU handled.

[00:09:52]It was uh very much like the simulations at the Martin Company in Denver. Uh except that we did find that when translating with the attitude hole system activated since we had built it to conserve propellant by turning some of the thrusters off, if you started to pick up a rotational rate. Uh this hadn't been uh been modeled in detail in the simulator. You got an averaged response. And of course here you could feel every little thruster coming on and off. Uh but other than that the flying characteristics were virtually identical to the simulator. And of course here we had complete freedom to uh turn somersaults and maneuver about all three rotational axes. And actually the orbital mechanics uh were much more realistic. And of course the the quality of the visuals that is the scene was uh was a lot higher here than in any simulator.

[00:10:46]Uh here I am I guess uh backing out uh to 150 ft and coming back in and then uh out to 300 and coming back in. Uh this is approximately the same sort of translation that the folks on the next mission the solar maximum repair mission will be faced with in moving [clears throat] from the orbiter over to the solar maximum spacecraft.

[00:11:11]It was uh interesting uh seeing Bob and Bruce go out to 300 yards that uh we uh had some qualms about it before the flight. We were uh concerned if they have a naturally human being out that far untethered, but uh we had backup procedures to go get him if anything went wrong with their equipment. So uh by the time flight came along we were quite happy with the idea and it turned out to be not bad in practice.

[00:11:42]This is some footage uh of the manipulator foot restraint in operation.

[00:11:47]Basically this is a foot platform type device uh that is held on the end of the remote manipulator arm and serves as a mobile work platform.

[00:11:58]This is uh my initial flight in the MMU just translating slowly out of the flight service station just getting the feel of the machine.

[00:12:08]Uh more on a manipulator foot restraint exercising some of its mechanisms. This was used uh to conduct a repair task simulating the repairs of the electronics box on the solar maximum repair mission. And we also made some measurements to determine the amount of force that can be input uh before backd driving the manipulator arm. In uh the lower left center, you can see the fisheye lens of the Cinema 360 camera that was mounted in a getaway special container in the payload bay. And the film footage from that has just been received back at the planetarium in Jackson, Mississippi. Uh and is supposed to be quite good, although we haven't seen it yet ourselves.

[00:12:50]I believe this particular sequence was taken at the end of the manipulator foot restraint activities on the first EVA or spacew walk and uh shows me being positioned back up by the stowage container by Ron who's inside driving the army. you might want to say a few words about the >> Yeah, I should add that uh we reduced this task to some very simple commands and between communication between Bruce and myself and Bob and uh it was necessary to be quite precise and understand exactly what we both intended but it was in fact uh very simple as long as that communication was well established. We This was a pretty unusual maneuver here going to the forward bulkhead of the uh payload bay.

[00:13:32]And it took some uh little acrobatics to to see those guys when they're positioned that forward far forward in the payload bay. But it worked out quite smoothly and uh we were able to get them positioned exactly where they wanted to go. And uh that manipulated foot restraint turns out to be a very convenient, useful workstation.

[00:13:56]Hey, back inside the cabin after the first EVA, uh, one of the tasks was to recharge and replenish the pressure suits or EMUs. Uh, this shot here shows reinstalling or installing a fresh lithium hydroxide cartridge, which absorbs the exhaled carbon dioxide in your breath, thereby partially revitalizing the circulating oxygen.

[00:14:19]On the second, >> this is uh my flight on the second EVA.

[00:14:23]I just completed some inverted dockings here. I wanted to see how the uh the machine flew when the only reference that you had uh was strictly the spa trunion pin. Uh this was done at night.

[00:14:34]So the uh the area that I'm looking at down what would be below my feet here is uh is just pure black. So uh there was no problem in maneuvering this thing regardless of whether you had a a nice reference background to see how your movements were going over the bay or whether it was just pure blackness and the only reference was the pen. This is a little footage from the first EVA that kind of snuck in here in the middle.

[00:14:56]>> Actually, I hate to take issue with it, Bob, but it's been scientifically determined. If you look closely, you can see what I mean. That's not black. It's navy blue.

[00:15:04]>> That's right.

[00:15:09]Again, uh the second EVA, the uh device on the front of the MMU, which I can't see here right now. We'll see again in a minute. The so-called keypad or trion pin attachment device uh which is being operated by the MMU pilot here is a device which is adapted to grab a trion pin on the solar maximum spacecraft that was not ever intended to be used as a means of capturing or or controlling the spacecraft but was a handy structural point you normally used for lifting it on the ground or supporting it uh in the orbiter. The TPAD represents a class of devices that can be used with the maneuvering unit to attach a grapple fixture to virtually any sort of satellite that is currently on orbit uh and to stabilize uh a large variety of st of satellites also to make it easier for the RMS to grab them. uh we exercised both the primary one which is sticking straight out and the secondary one which is uh 90 degrees down from the primary one and basically are very happy that they function in the manner in which they're intended.

[00:16:22]Bob has pointed out there is no up and there is no down in in space. In the simulators you can do this same sort of maneuver even underwater. Uh but when you do it's still fairly uncomfortable.

[00:16:35]all the blood rushes to your head because you really are upside down in in 1G. And although you can do it, you don't like to fly around upside down for too long. In space, uh there is none of that feeling of uneasiness. Uh once you're accustomed to seeing the Earth rushing by at 4 m/s and you concentrate on the orbiter andor the the spas your references at hand, you feel quite comfortable flying around at the relatively slow velocities with respect to them. It's sort of like uh two rather fast airplanes flying formation on one another.

[00:17:13]The reason for the slow movement here is primarily fuel. takes a given amount of fuel to start you and a given amount of fuel to stop you. And uh the faster you go, the more fuel you expend. So we tend to move kind of slowly to conserve fuel.

[00:17:29][clears throat] So this is all the equipment that'll be needed for the next mission, the satellite repair mission.

[00:17:35]And uh we felt that uh we filled those squares qualification for the equipment wise that are required to say that one can go repair the next mission can go repair satellites and uh Ron and I were inside during all this time. Uh was taking care of the ship. any little uh problem that came up with the ship systems. He he got a lot of good photography. You'll see the stills later. I think he'll probably be photographer of the year uh based on some of those great EVA stills.

[00:18:19]>> Couldn't get those guys to hold still except when the movie camera was running and then we didn't do much in the way of moving around.

[00:18:30]This is uh making a so-called hard dock.

[00:18:36]Upper left is a foot restraint floating away. Partway through the second EVA, I was stowing the teapad and I noticed it was gone. I said it slipped. And uh then Vance went into his rescue mode, which I would like to point out. He certainly wasn't anticipating anything like this, but we had worked up procedures to rescue a crewman or an MMU should it get lost overboard. And I'll let Vance pick up from there.

[00:18:59]Well, the orbiter uh has this tremendous capability to go over and get something.

[00:19:04]So, we maneuvered this 200,000 lb plus uh orbiter over to pick up this uh foot restraint. It probably weighed a few pounds. And uh it was uh fairly uh easy to do this. And uh we lucked out in that we demonstrated that you could go rescue a crewman in the same way we rescued the foot rest. I guess it got about 40 or 50 ft away before you you closed to bring it within my grasp there.

[00:19:30]>> That's right. Here we're uh closing the payload bay doors about time to come home.

[00:19:40]We had uh spent nearly 8 days in orbit.

[00:19:47]You can see the doors are very flexible.

[00:19:49]They they worked uh beautifully. As a matter of fact, we thought the the orbiter had a few minor things go wrong, but they were only minor. Uh it it just performed uh magnificently.

[00:20:02]We're coming up on the entry sequence, and what you're going to see right away, we are on the dark side of the Earth, but the sky around us is glowing red uh from the heat of re-entry as we're coming down.

[00:20:13]>> Kind of like being inside a blast furnace.

[00:20:16]>> That's the view. What you're seeing is out the windows of the orbiter and this is the uh very hot plasma surrounding the orbiter as we come back down.

[00:20:25]We saw that from about 24 times the speed of sound down to 11 times the speed of sound.

[00:20:31]And uh here we are coming over the over Florida. The long range cameras on us.

[00:20:36]The body flap is down quite a long ways.

[00:20:38]The machine is still supersonic.

[00:20:42]And now you can see the the underside looks like an arrow head which is a has a very small wings for such a big vehicle. Here we are coming around the hack as we call it a a circle to line up [clears throat] for uh the straightaway just prior to landing at Kennedy Space Center.

[00:21:05]That runway didn't look near as big from there by the way as it had looked [clears throat] from on the ground.

[00:21:13]These are lights that uh we use for lineup. We we also have automatic guidance on board that helps us. But of course uh we were manually flying the machine from about 9/10 uh lock number on down.

[00:21:28]>> Yeah. Vance won't say so, but as you see in a second, two red and two white lights means you were right on the glide path.

[00:21:35]You did a super job of bringing the airplane in and landing it.

[00:21:39]It was >> two red and two white.

[00:21:43]>> I think it was a real uh thrill for all of us. We really enjoyed being able to come into the Cape. On the left you see another light used for reference here.

[00:21:52]The gears coming down. Hoot put it down at about 400 ft.

[00:21:57][clears throat] The ground cameras have us coming over the threshold here.

[00:22:05]Little bit of ground fog, but not not enough to bother. Streamers coming off the wing tips.

[00:22:11]>> We're going to make them red and blue for the next mission.

[00:22:18]>> And the nose coming down. And then uh braking. We uh we just did light braking. We used up a large part of the runway, but we didn't really need to.

[00:22:32]We really enjoyed it on orbit. Uh uh I wasn't sure at one point we were going to get Bob and Bruce in from the second EVA cuz they just wanted to stay out there so we could come home like this and the roll out and uh after about 30 minutes uh we came down the stairs. We weren't in a big hurry because we wanted to get our land legs back.

[00:23:00]Met uh Mr. Abby the our our boss walked down the red carpet at the Cape then decided well let's take a look at the ship see how it fared.

[00:23:31]and we decided we'd better get back on the red carpet again.

[00:23:42]Well, this uh this crew adapted very well to space flight and uh I think we adapted very quickly back to Earth again. We enjoyed the flight.