Alexei Leonov
Russian cosmonaut who made the first spacewalk and went on to shake hands in space with US counterparts
ALEXEI Leonov, the Russian cosmonaut, who has died aged 85, performed the first spacewalk in history when he left the Voskhod 2 capsule and drifted in the vacuum; but the return nearly proved fatal.
Leonov’s mission was orchestrated by Sergei Korolev, chief architect of the Soviet space programme and the man responsible for Yuri Gagarin’s monumental departure from the Earth’s atmosphere on board Vostok 1 in April 1961.
The capsule that would carry Leonov into space would be a modified, heavier version of the same craft, with the crucial addition of an airlock.
By the time Voskhod 2 left the ground on March 18, 1965, tensions were running high. Just the previous month an unmanned mission to test the depressurisation chamber had ended in disaster when the capsule exploded, taking all flight data with it.
Rumours circulated of sabotage, but the manned launch could not be delayed. Intelligence suggested that the Americans’ rival Gemini project was proceeding at an alarming rate, and neither Leonov nor his mission commander, Pavel Belyayev, were prepared to compromise the Soviets’ advantage.
With Voskhod 2 in orbit, Leonov crawled into the depressurisation chamber, where he tethered himself to the capsule with 18ft of rope. Emerging from the hatch as Voskhod 2 passed over the Pacific Ocean, he remained in the aperture for several minutes before pushing himself away.
The event was broadcast live on Soviet television, to the shock of friends and family watching at home, who had known nothing of the planned extravehicular activity, or EVA.
The order to come back inside was unwelcome at first. Soon, however, it had become a matter of urgency. Leonov’s spacesuit had ballooned due to the lack of atmospheric pressure, making it impossible for him to re-enter the airlock. He was also exhausted and starting to sweat heavily.
Without alerting Belyayev or mission control to the immediate danger, he began venting the atmosphere from the suit. At last he was able to re-enter the airlock, curling his body round so that Belyayev could seal the hatches.
Nothing of the crisis had reached television audiences; all broadcasting had been suspended as soon as the mission looked to be in jeopardy. Leonov had been outside the cabin for a total of 23 minutes and 41 seconds, spending 12 min 19 sec beyond the airlock.
Even then the perils of the mission were not yet over. The automatic landing system failed as Voskhod 2 was coming out of orbit, and fuel had run so low that the crew could only afford one attempt at manual re-entry.
The landing module finally thudded down into thick snow near Perm, Siberia, almost a thousand miles from their intended point. Despite the severity of their plight, Leonov joked: “In three months, maybe, they’ll find us with dog sleighs.” They woke the next morning to a helicopter overhead and the arrival of a rescue party.
Leonov’s achievement was a further coup for the Soviets, though there were those who claimed that the grainy photographs released to the Western world were fakes.
Unperturbed by such scepticism, Leonov went on to enjoy warm relations with his American counterparts as Soviet commander of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz test project, the culminating event of the space race.
The eighth of nine surviving children, Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov was born on May 30, 1934, on the outskirts of Listvyanka, a remote Siberian village in what is now the Kemerovo region. Three other siblings had died in infancy. Three years after Alexei’s birth, his father, Arkhip Leonov, a railway worker, electrician and miner, was arrested on the testimony of vindictive neighbours, who declared him an “enemy of the people”.
A mob arrived at their doorstep and stripped the household of food, furniture and belongings. Arkhip was subsequently cleared of all charges and rejoined his family at Kemerovo on the Tom River, finding work at the local nuclear power plant.
From early boyhood Alexei displayed promise in art, and would earn extra food for the family by drawing pictures on the whitewashed stoves of his neighbours’ rooms. At six, however, he had his first encounter with a Soviet pilot, and a new ambition took precedence.
In 1948 the family moved to Kaliningrad, where Alexei finished his education before enrolling at a flying school in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. Then, aged 19, he spent two years learning how to fly propeller planes, followed by a further two years handling military jets at the Higher Military Pilots’ School in Chuhuiv, also in Ukraine.
He graduated with honours and the rank of lieutenant. By the time he was selected for the cosmonaut group in 1960 he had completed more than 100 parachute jumps.
Initially, Leonov served as an assistant Capcom (capsule communicator) for Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 mission. The pair became close friends, Gagarin coining a variety of nicknames for him — “Pencil”, “Artist”, “Blondie” — but Leonov’s early training was marked by a series of near-misses.
He performed badly on the initial centrifuge tests and was judged too tall for the Vostok missions. During the same period he almost drowned when his car skidded across an icy lake and overturned. Many hours of intense physical training paid off, however, and in the summer of 1964 he began preparations to join Belyayev on board Voskhod 2. He took his crayons and a sketch pad into orbit, creating the first art in space.
Following the success of the EVA mission, Leonov was awarded the Order of Lenin.
From 1967 he joined a training group for possible circumlunar and landing expeditions using the Zond L1 craft and the secret LK-3 lunar lander.
But the Americans were a step ahead: on December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 made a successful return to Earth after completing 10 orbits of the Moon.
After graduating from the Zhukovsky Air Force Training Academy, Leonov became crew commander of the Soyuz 11 mission to the Salyut 1 space station, set to launch in June 1971. The mission was overhauled just one week before launch, when Leonov’s fellow cosmonaut Valeri Kubasov was found to have a spot on his lung during a routine medical. Fearing tuberculosis, the entire crew was grounded and replacements found.
Though Leonov was furious at the decision, it would prove to be yet another narrow escape. When Soyuz 11 touched down around midnight GMT on June 29, 1971, all three crew members were found dead, the cabin having depressurised on re-entry. Salyut 1 was abandoned and allowed to crash into the Pacific Ocean that October.
Leonov had to wait until 1975 before he left the Earth’s atmosphere for the second time. Plans for a Soviet-American “handshake in space” had been agreed between President Richard Nixon and the Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin in May 1972; a joint space mission would, both parties believed, demonstrate the potential for Earth-bound cooperative efforts.
Deke Slayton, Tom Stafford and Vance Brand comprised the American team, while the Soviets elected to send Leonov and Kubasov — the engineer whose illness had scuppered Leonov’s chances in the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission.
For the first time, Soviet astronauts attended the Johnson Space Centre in Houston for an initial briefing, while the Americans returned the courtesy during a visit to Star City in Russia in October 1973. The process was repeated on several further occasions, Leonov spending up to six weeks in Houston at a time.
There, he learnt to speak English fluently and formed strong bonds with the American team. To the American and Soviet press he proved an engaging interviewee, teasing Stafford about his drawling Russian pronunciation and joking that he, Leonov, had now mastered three languages: Russian, English and “Oklahomski”.
The American and Soviet crews launched successfully within seven and a half hours of each other on July 15, 1975, and docked in orbit on July 17, 140 miles above the Earth. Three hours later Stafford and Leonov met in the docking tunnel that connected their two craft, Stafford greeting his Cold War counterpart in Russian as he took his hand: “Tovarich [comrade].”
“Very, very glad to see you. How are things?” Leonov replied in English, and the pair attempted an awkward, zero-gravity bear hug before moving into the Soyuz cabin to join Kubasov.
Back on Earth, Leonov was appointed commander of the cosmonaut team until 1982, and went on to become the first deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre at Star City.
With the break-up of the Soviet Union he retired in 1991, left the air force the following year and entered the private sector. For several years he worked with the Alfa-Capital Investment Fund, becoming vice-president of Moscow’s Alfa-Bank and adviser to the chairman of the board of directors.
Leonov’s autobiography, Two Sides of the Moon, which he wrote with David Scott, was published in 2004. He also acted as a consultant on a Russian feature film about his spacewalk released in 2017.
Alexei Leonov, who died on October 11, married, in 1959, Svetlana Pavlovna, a teacher, with whom he had two children.