9 NASA Images That Wow 50 Years After America's First Spacewalk
(CBS News) - Two-and-a-half months after cosmonaut Alexey Leonov became the first human to walk in space, NASA astronaut Ed White floated out of his cramped Gemini 4 capsule 50 years ago Wednesday to become the first free-flying American in orbit.
In the five decades since then, astronauts and cosmonauts have chalked up 413 spacewalks, including 187 totaling a combined 49 days to build and maintain the International Space Station and 23 covering nearly seven days to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
While spacewalks have become a relatively common part of modern spaceflight, working in the vacuum of space while moving at five miles per second and experiencing 500-degree temperature swings passing into and out of Earth's shadow will never be routine, and the disorienting photos of those trips into space will never seem normal.
Here's a look at nine of our favorite NASA photos since White stepped into space (Details of each mission in the caption):