1st human to walk in space
MOSCOW — Alexei Leonov, the legendary Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human to walk in space 54 years ago — and who nearly didn’t make it back into his space capsule — has died in Moscow at 85.
Mr. Leonov — described by the Russian Space Agency as Cosmonaut No. 11 — was an icon both in his country as well as in the U.S. He was such a legend that the late science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke named a Soviet spaceship after him in his “2010” sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Mr. Leonov staked his place in history on March 18, 1965, when he exited his Voskhod 2 space capsule secured by a tether.
“I stepped into that void and I didn’t fall in,” he recalled. “I was mesmerized by the stars. They were everywhere — up above, down below, to the left, to the right. I can still hear my breath and my heartbeat in that silence.”
Mr. Leonov’s pioneering venture was particularly nerve-wracking. His spacesuit had inflated so much in the vacuum of space that he could not get back into the spacecraft. He had to open a valve to vent oxygen from his suit to be able to fit through the hatch.
Mr. Leonov’s 12-minute spacewalk preceded the first U.S. spacewalk, by Ed White, by less than three months.
On his second trip into space 10 years later, Mr. Leonov commanded the Soviet half of Apollo-Soyuz 19. That mission was the first one between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and was carried out at the height of the Cold War. It was a prelude to the international cooperation seen aboard the current International Space Station.