Alexei Leonov, first person to walk in space, dies at 85

Alexei Leonov, a Soviet cosmonaut who in 1965 became the first person to walk in space and who was scheduled to walk on the moon before the Soviet Union abandoned its efforts for a manned lunar landing, died Oct. 11 in Moscow. He was 85.

Leonov, a Soviet air force officer, was chosen in 1959 as part of his country’s inaugural class of astronauts – known as cosmonauts in the old Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets were leading the space race, a symbolic and strategic battle for technological superiority during the Cold War.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. In April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin – a close friend of Leonov’s – became the first person launched into space.

As the U.S. space program tried to catch up, with flights by Alan Shepard Jr. and John Glenn, the Soviets sought new ways to maintain their early edge. Leonov began training for his spacewalk in 1963.

He underwent a rigorous program of swimming and running and was subjected to long periods of weightlessness. A special suit and helmet were made to withstand the extreme conditions in space.

As perilous as early space travel was, it seemed doubly dangerous for a human being to “walk” – or, more precisely, to float – outside the safety of the capsule. On March 18, 1965, Leonov took that step.

He left the capsule through a hatch, leaving a fellow cosmonaut, Pavel Belyayev, to pilot the ship. Leonov entered an airtight chamber called an air lock and inhaled pure oxygen for almost an hour to reduce the level of nitrogen in his blood, as a means of preventing decompression sickness, or the bends. Finally, he opened the outer hatch and entered space, more than 100 miles above the earth’s surface, connected to his capsule by a 16-foot-long tether.