The surprising story of the scariest photo in space!

The story of the most frightening space photo in history has been revealed after Bruce McCandless II left the space shuttle in 1984.

On February 7, 1984, Bruce and his friend Bob Stewart strapped themselves into their Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) and performed a disconnected spacewalk as the space shuttle traveled at about 28,900 kilometers per hour.

Bruce was also the first human to perform this untethered spacewalk.

It's a frightening sight for people who prefer to be tethered to Earth, or at least tethered to a spacecraft that protects you from dying in space, but the feeling for the first person to fly untethered was a professional achievement. McCandless told the Guardian: "It was a wonderful feeling, a mixture of personal joy and professional pride: it took many years to get to this point."