American astronaut Bruce McCandless, the first person to fly freely and untethered in space, has died at the age of 80.
NASA's Johnson Space Center said McCandless died Thursday in California but no cause of death was given.
He was famously photographed in 1984 flying with a hefty spacewalker's jetpack, alone in the cosmic blackness above a blue Earth.
McCandless traveled more than 91 meters away from the space shuttle Challenger during the spacewalk.■
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