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The first extravehicular activity of American astronaut Edward H. White II remains forever one of the most significant achievements of the early space age. It was immortalized by a mythic series of photographs showing, for the first time, a human being floating in the vacuum of space in a state of complete weightlessness.
Two types of images are associated with this event.
The first was captured by the onboard television camera of the Gemini 4 spacecraft, revealing in the foreground the open hatch of the orbiting capsule. In the distance, against the backdrop of the Earth’s globe, the floating figure of astronaut Edward H. White appears in various positions.
The second series was taken from inside Gemini 4 by astronaut James McDivitt. It shows, in a tighter framing, the white silhouette of a man in his space suit, not standing upright but suspended in the vacuum of space, held by a long tether forming loops reminiscent of an umbilical cord. Some observers have even seen in this image the Earth as a symbolic placenta, making it an expression of space as a future habitat for humanity.
