Edward H. White II was the first American astronaut to experience the free-floating sensation of spacewalking. Venturing out into the void on June 3, 1965, White watched Earth turn slowly beneath him during a 21-minute extravehicular excursion as Gemini IV orbited 6,500 miles around our planet.
In the years since, NASA astronauts have made more than 260 spacewalks, which the agency, in its typically understated way, calls "extravehicular activity." These include more than 166 hours spent tinkering with the Hubble Space Telescope. As NASA celebrates the birth of Mission Control and the anniversary of the first American spacewalk (the Russians beat us by 77 days), it released Suit Up and offers an epic collection of mission images.
Whether using a digital camera or a Hasselblad film camera, astronauts have been documenting history in the making for decades. The next frontier may well be Mars, and we can't wait for those space selfies.
