First US spacewalk: Ed White reluctantly returning to the spacecraft; "saddest moment of my life", 3-7 June 1965

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, with "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, numbered "NASA S-65-29766" (NASA MSC) in red in top margin, 20,3 x 25,4 cm

This famous view of Ed White returning to the hatch of the spacecraft was captured by the 16mm camera (whose shadow appears on the open hatch door at lower right) that Ed White had mounted outside the spacecraft just before his EVA.

Describing his experience as the first spacewalker (on Voskhod I, three months before Ed White), cosmonaut Alexei Leonov exclaimed, “I felt absolutely free, soaring like a bird... as though I had wings, as though I was flying by my own efforts” (Chaikin, Space, pp. 54-55). The first US spacewalker Ed White was also completely entranced by the experience and he resisted repeated calls from Houston to get back to the spacecraft.

From the mission transcript at the end of the EVA:
004:48:40 McDivitt: Come on, let’s get back here before it gets dark.
004:48:46 White: Okay. This is the saddest moment of my life.
004:48:53 McDivitt: Well you’re going to find a sadder one when we have to come down from this whole thing.
004:49:00 White: I’m coming.

Literature:
Newsweek, 21 June 1965, cover; NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, September 1965, pp. 442-443 (variant).