The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first human to walk in space
Alexei Leonov, the legendary Soviet cosmonaut who was the first human to walk in space 54 years ago, has died in Moscow aged 85.
Russian space agency Roscosmos confirmed his death in a statement on its website, but gave no further details.
Mr Leonov staked his place in history on March 18 1965, when he exited his Voskhod 2 capsule secured by a tether.
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.
His 12-minute spacewalk preceded the first US spacewalk, by Ed White, by less than three months.
On his second trip to space 10 years later, Mr Leonov commanded the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz 19 mission.
It was the first joint space mission between the Soviet Union and the US, at the height of the Cold War, and was a prelude to international co-operation seen aboard the current space station.
Days before his 85th birthday in May, two Russian crew members on the International Space Station ventured into open space on a planned spacewalk with stickers attached to their spacesuits paying tribute to Mr Leonov, and congratulated him from space.
British astronaut Tim Peake said Mr Leonov was “a hero to so many, pioneer of spacewalking and always full of wisdom and humour”.
Mr Leonov was born in 1934 in a large peasant family in western Siberia. Like countless Soviet peasants, his father was arrested and shipped off to Gulag prison camps under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, but he managed to survive and was reunited with his family.