COSMONAUT HAD CLOSE CALLS.
Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who has died aged 85, performed the first spacewalk in history — but the return nearly proved fatal.
By the time Voskhod 2 left Earth on March 18, 1965, tensions were running high. Weeks before, the capsule exploded on an unmanned mission to test the depressurization chamber.
With Voskhod 2 in orbit, Leonov crawled into the depressurization chamber, tethering himself to the capsule with six metres of rope. He remained in the aperture for several minutes before pushing himself away.
But then Leonov’s spacesuit ballooned from lack of atmospheric pressure, rendering it impossible to re-enter the airlock. He became exhausted and started to sweat heavily. Without alerting anyone to the immediate danger, he vented the suit until he was able to re-enter. Leonov had spent more than 12 minutes beyond the airlock.
The eighth of nine children, Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov was born May 30, 1934, in a Siberian village. At six, he met a Soviet pilot and developed an ambition for aviation.
Leonov studied at a flying school in Ukraine, spent two years learning to fly propeller planes and two years handling military jets.
In 1960, Leonov was selected for the cosmonaut group. Initially, he was an assistant on Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 mission, and they became close friends.
Leonov was awarded the Order of Lenin, and in 1971 was crew commander of the Soyuz 11 mission to the Salyut 1 space station. The mission was scrapped a week before launch, when cosmonaut Valeri Kubasov was found to have a spot on his lung. Fearing tuberculosis, the crew was grounded and replacements found.
It would prove yet another narrow escape for Leonov. All three crew members died, the cabin having depressurized on reentry.
Leonov became Soviet commander of the 1975 Apollo-soyuz test project, the culminating event of the U.s.-soviet space race.
Soviet and American astronauts did study exchanges in others’ countries, during which Leonov spent up to six weeks at a time in Houston.
He commanded the Soviet cosmonaut team until 1982, was deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, retired in 1991 and later entered the private sector.
In 1959, Alexei Leonov married Svetlana Pavlovna, a teacher, with whom he had two children.