Timelapse video: The final space shuttle assembled for flight

It was 1986 and the U.S. Air Force was on the cusp of something unprecedented in human spaceflight — launching a space shuttle crew from California and paving the way for people to fly true polar missions.

Former astronaut Bruce McCandless II, a retired Navy captain and son of a Medal of Honor winner who joined NASA during the buildup to the Apollo program, served as capsule communicator when Neil Armstrong took his historic first step on the moon and later flew in space twice during the shuttle program, died Thursday. He was 80.

The tugboat and barge transporting the last space shuttle external tank to its display venue in California have reached the inlet to the Panama Canal, now just days away from sailing into the Pacific.