Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space | Science | The Guardian The Observer Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space ‘I was surrounded by stars, floating without control,’ recalls the cosmonaut who made history 50 years ago on a mission that nearly cost him his life An artist’s rendering of the first space walk by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Photograph: Rykoff Collection/Corbis Saturday 9 May 2015 12.06 EDT Last modified on Saturday 9 May 2015 19.00 EDT Close This article is 1 year old Fifty years ago, Alexei Leonov opened the airlock of his tiny space capsule, which was orbiting the Earth, and stepped into the void. For 12 minutes the Soviet cosmonaut floated above our planet, tethered to his ship by a 16ft cable. In doing so, Leonov became the first person to walk in space. The first space walk – in pictures Read more It was an event of extraordinary importance – for spacewalks have since become a mainstay of most major manned endeavours in Earth orbit.

More than 200 astronauts – floating free in space on extra-vehicular activity, or EVAs – have since carried out tasks ranging from the repair of the Hubble space telescope to the construction of the international space station. As Leonov told the Observer: “It is impossible to imagine the development of any serious space project or experiment without EVAs today.” Spacewalks can be dangerous, however, and Leonov’s own mission very nearly ended in disaster after it was afflicted by a series of mishaps that will form the core of a new film, First Time , scheduled for release in Russia next year. It will tell a story that is every bit as dramatic as Apollo 13, the US lunar mission – filmed with Tom Hanks – that also came close to catastrophe. Leonov – now 80 – is scheduled to give a first-person account of his spacewalk, and other aspects of his career as chief cosmonaut for the Soviet Union, when he speaks at the Science Museum in London this month. Pinterest Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, right, at an awarding ceremony in Moscow’s Kremlin.

Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev/AP In 1965 the Soviet Union appeared to be well ahead of the US in the race to land the first humans on the Moon. It had put the first satellite, the first animal, the first man, and the first woman into orbit and, knowing that America was planning to allow one of its astronauts, Ed White, to take a spacewalk in June that year, it decided to add another first to its list of space achievements by getting a Soviet cosmonaut to do an EVA before then. Leonov, who had trained as a cosmonaut with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was selected for the task. On 18 March he was blasted into orbit in a two-man Voskhod capsule which he shared with his commander, Pavel Belyayev. After completing one orbit, Leonov was given the go-ahead to begin his spacewalk and crawled into the craft’s makeshift airlock. He opened its hatch, slid out and floated into space to begin his mission. Leonov still remembers the utter silence he experienced when he emerged from his spaceship. “It was so quiet I could even hear my heart beat,” he told the Observer.

“I was surrounded by stars and was floating without much control. I will never forget the moment. I also felt an incredible sense of responsibility. Of course, I did not know that I was about to experience the most difficult moments of my life – getting back into the capsule.” Leonov’s spacewalk very nearly ended in disaster. In the vacuum of outer space, his spacesuit began to balloon out of shape and its fabric began to stiffen dangerously. His hands slipped out of his gloves, his feet came out of his boots, and Leonov could no longer get through his spaceship’s airlock. Even worse, the craft was hurtling towards Earth’s shadow. In five minutes, the cosmonaut realised he would be plunged into total darkness. So he began bleeding air from his suit from a valve in its inner lining. Very slowly his suit deflated, just as Leonov began to notice the first signs of decompression sickness. “I could feel pins and needles in my hands and legs,” he recalled. Leonov squeezed himself headfirst through the airlock and just managed to close its hatch behind him, his temperature by now soaring through the extreme exertion of his return to the spaceship. Leonov slumped back in his seat beside Belyayev.

His woes were far from over, however. First, a charge was fired to blast the airlock – which was no longer needed – into space. The explosion caused Voskhod 2 to rotate, disorienting its two crewmen. At the same time, instruments showed oxygen levels in the capsule were now climbing at an alarming rate, threatening to trigger a blaze that would have burned both men alive. Several hours passed before Leonov and Belyayev could get the craft’s oxygen levels back to normal. By now, the spaceship was scheduled to return to Earth. However, the two cosmonauts discovered its automatic re-entry system no longer worked. So the pair fired the craft’s re-entry rockets manually. This manoeuvre should have separated the landing capsule, containing Leonov and Belyayev, from the spaceship’s orbital module. “A few seconds after the firing of the engine, we felt a jolt as the orbital module separated from our cabin – but something went wrong,” said Leonov. “We felt a tugging force pulling us back! I looked out of a window and saw the orbital module was still connected to us by a communications cable.

As a result, both modules were spinning rapidly as we fell steeply to Earth!” Voskhod 2 was plunging to destruction, but was saved by the heat of re-entry which burnt through the communications cable. The landing module separated and its parachutes were deployed. “We were safe,” he said. Pinterest Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 1965 Photograph: Associated Press The crewmen’s problems had still not reached an end. Their craft landed 2,000 kilometres downrange from its intended target and plunged into a dense Siberian forest. It took two days before a rescue mission reached the pair, who had to huddle in their tiny capsule in temperatures well below zero. “We spent two cold nights in the forest,” said Leonov. “We did not meet wolves or bears, but we knew that there were many of them around. It was spring time and the animals were very aggressive. Once again, we were lucky!” At the time, the Russians hailed the mission as a complete success. In fact, it had come close to ending in disaster, though these near-catastrophes were not revealed until many years after the return of Voskhod 2.

Belyayev died five years after the mission from peritonitis caused by an operation on a stomach ulcer. Leonov went on to become a distinguished cosmonaut. Indeed, had events unravelled in only slightly different ways, Leonov might have become the first Soviet cosmonaut to walk on the Moon. In the 60s, the Soviet Union had started to design its own rival to the US Apollo lunar programme. “Our Lunar Orbital Craft (LOC) was going to carry two cosmonauts into orbit around the Moon,” said Leonov. “It would act as ‘a mother ship’ for a lander which would land me on the surface.” The rocket that would have taken the LOC and lander to the Moon was known as the N1, but had to be scrapped after several test flight failures. Leonov never made it to the Moon, but he did take part in one further notable space mission.

He commanded the Soviet Soyuz capsule that docked with an Apollo capsule in space in 1975, a rendezvous that marked the end of the space race that had begun so well for the Russians in the late 50s but which ended so conclusively in US victory when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on to the Moon in July 1969. Later, Leonov – who is also a gifted artist – was appointed commander of the Soviet cosmonaut team and given the title chief cosmonaut. He retired in 1991. Alexei Leonov will give a lecture, hosted by the British Interplanetary Society, at the Science Museum, London, at 7pm on 21 May. Tickets from the BIS . First Spacewalk by Alexei Leonov: Catching Up with the Cosmonaut view example Marco Grob for TIMEAlexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, photographed at the age of 80 in his office in Moscow on March 12, 2015. Leonov, whom TIME photographer Marco Grob visited for a portrait session earlier this month, was the stuff of Soviet legend from the very beginning.

Born in a coal-mining region in Siberia, he was the son of a woman who earned the country’s coveted Order of Maternal Glory, in recognition of what was seen as the greatest service a Soviet woman could perform for the Soviet state: having a great many babies—in her case nine. Leonov joined the Young Communist League, went on to flying school—where he made 115 parachute jumps—and was selected in the very first astronaut class. There was little way to overstate the risks Leonov faced on his first mission, when he ventured outside his Voskhod spacecraft—a sturdy, tank-like vehicle that was the Soviet designers’ specialty—and drifted into space protected only by what amounted to a far-frailer fabric and rubber spacecraft. But TIME, in its March 26, 1965 cover story about the mission, tried. “As air escaped from the [spacecraft’s air lock], the vacuum of space reached into it like a monster’s claw,” TIME wrote.

“Though it must have been rehearsed on earth over and over again, this was surely a moment of hideous crisis.” Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty ImagesThe astonaut Alexei Leonov floating in space during his first spacewalk on March 18, 1965. Leonov, however, felt no such apprehension. Like so many astronauts and cosmonauts, he describes the spacewalk experience as one of great peace. “I don’t remember anything as well as I remember the sound—this remarkable silence,” he told Grob. “You can hear your heart beat and you can hear yourself breathe. Nothing else can accurately represent what it sounds like when a human being is in the middle of this abyss.” Like other spacewalkers too, he powerfully recalls the view. “I close my eyes and I see the entire Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula. This is not a map, it’s what I saw. I can take a pencil now and draw it, because I remembered it for the rest of my life. I looked up and there was the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Kaliningrad. I spent my adolescence at the Gulf of Kaliningrad.

It was so unusual.” Keystone-France/Getty ImagesAlexei Leonov, c. 1960s. TIME’s coverage of the mission gave Leonov and the Soviets their deserved applause—acknowledging the triumph of the spacewalk, as well their program’s commanding advantage in booster power and technology, especially compared to NASA’s puny, two-man Gemini ship, which was set for its first launch just a few days after Leonov’s flight. The historic spacewalk and the bruising Voskhod, TIME conceded, hung over the Gemini hoopla like an “embarrassing shadow.” But TIME’s story was grudging too—sniffing at the images the Soviets released of Leonov’s walk as “dim and probably purposely fuzzy,” while selecting perhaps the dimmest and fuzziest of all for the cover and passing over the far crisper ones. Soviet party chief Leonid Brezhnev “did his leaden best” in congratulating the crew, TIME wrote, and the country’s official announcement of the spacewalk was “as formal as if carved in stone.” But never mind.

There was no denying the huge step that a human being—even if it wasn’t an American human being—had just taken in space, and its impact has endured. “Now all astronauts who are preparing for [a mission] undergo full training in order to be able to work in open space,” says Leonov. “This isn’t even up for debate. If you can’t work, you don’t belong in the program.” Leonov himself would get only one more flight. He was tapped by the Soviets to command the first circumlunar mission in 1969 and all but certainly would have been chosen for the first moon-landing mission that would follow. History notes that those flights never happened, that the U.S. overcame the huge Soviet lead and eventually won the race to the moon. Leonov did not take to space again until 1975, when he commanded the Soviet half of the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission, a flight that marked the formal end of the space race, celebrated the age of détente and led, decades later, to the multinational cooperation of the International Space Station. Keystone-France/Getty ImagesPeople celebrating the success of the mission Voskhod II in Moscow in 1965.

As Grob’s elegant photos show, Leonov still wears his medals and his dignity well. He has outlived legends—Ed White, who became America’s first spacewalker, in June of 1965; Neil Armstrong, who kicked up the lunar dust Leonov was supposed to be first to stir; Gagarin, who was considered too great a national prize ever to endanger by sending to space again and who died instead in a routine training run of a MiG-15 jet in 1968. It was Leonov who identified his friend’s remains by a birthmark on his neck. The half a century since Leonov’s walk is a lot of time in human history, nothing at all in cosmic history. That dual kind of timekeeping is something the species only truly began practicing after men like Leonov went aloft—changing our terrestrial perspective forever. Alexei Leonov Biography from Astronaut Central Seagull SOLD OUT Leonov was to be the Commander of the first Soviet Moon mission, cancelled when Apollo 11 took the prize in 1969. Leonov and lunar co-pilot Valery Kubasov were then assigned to Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station.

But Kubasov fell ill, and the backup crew sent to Salyut died when an air valve failed in their spacecraft as they were returning to Earth. Leonov and Kubasov were re-assigned to the Apollo-Soyuz project, the first linking of Soviet and American spacecraft in 1975. Leonov trained in Houston, learning English and impressing everyone with his quick wit, humor, and charm. General Leonov is a Renaissance man; a gifted athlete, pilot and self-taught artist. He is a highly decorated survivor of the harrowing days of the U.S.-Soviet Space Race. He has cheated death several times, in an early parachute accident, then twice aboard his Voskhod 2 spacewalk mission. Leonov would have died in place of his backup crew had not Valery Kubasov fallen ill before their Salyut-1 flight. Leonov also survived when his car skidded and plunged into a deep ice-covered lake. Leonov heroically pulled his wife and driver to safety. He survived an assasination attempt on Premier Brezhnev when their car was showered in with bullets. The driver was killed, but Leonov managed to crouch behind the seat.

Leonov has always indulged in his love of art, painting everything from stoic Russian churches, Siberian snow scenes and of course, space art. As the first artist in space, Leonov often paints from actual color sketches done in space aboard his two flights. Although self-taught, his works show a polish and realism typical of a trained professional. After a joint exhibition with American space artists in Moscow, he led the Soviet space artists to the International Space Art Workshop held in Iceland the following year. Leonov's works have been displayed all over the former Soviet Union, and at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. He has been published in several books (in Russian) and in "In The Stream of Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book" by Dr. William K. Hartmann. General Leonov is deputy director of Gagarin Cosmonaut Center, in charge of international and guest cosmonauts. He is also editor, designer, and cartoonist for APOGEE, the formerly supersecret cosmonaut newsletter. His wife Svetlana is a teacher, and they have two daughters, Viktoria and Oksana.

International Space Hall of Fame :: New Mexico Museum of Space History :: Inductee Profile Inducted in 1976 The first man to walk in space. Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov is a former Soviet cosmonaut who is also an accomplished artist. In 1965, he became the first person to step out of a spacecraft and walk in space. In 1975, he commanded the Soyuz spacecraft that took part in the first rendezvous between a Soviet and United States spacecraft. Leonov was born in Listvyanka in the Altai region of Siberia on May 30, 1934. He graduated from the Soviet Air Force Academy of Arts in Riga then attended Pilot prep school in Kremenchug. In 1957, he graduated with honors from the Chuguyev Higher Air Force School and, in 1968, from the Zhukovskiy Air Force Engineering Academy. He earned a Candidate of Technical Sciences degree in 1981. In 1960, Alexei Leonov became one of the original twenty cosmonauts chosen by the Russian space program.

His first spaceflight was the Voskhod 2 mission on March 18, 1965. Pavel Belyayev commanded the 26-hour flight and Leonov was the Pilot. Ninety minutes after the launch, Leonov became the first person to walk in space, floating freely outside the Voskhod capsule for more than ten minutes high above the Earth. When Leonov attempted to return to the capsule he could not because the pressure difference between the air in his space suit, and the vacuum of space, expanded the suit, making it so rigid he could not work his fingers. Eventually he bled some of the air out of the suit and was able to close the lock's outer hatch. By the time Leonov ended his spacewalk it had lasted over twenty minutes. During re-entry the onboard computer for the Voskhod malfunctioned and the capsule landed over 600 miles off course in a remote section of the Ural Mountains. After two days and a cold night in the wilderness the cosmonauts were finally rescued.

Alexei Leonov received the Hero of the Soviet Union award for his spacewalk and became deputy commander of the cosmonaut team, teaching other cosmonauts how to perform extravehicular activities. He also worked on the Soviet lunar landing program and was going to be the leader of the first Soviet manned lunar mission. Once that was cancelled after Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, he began training for the Salyut space station project. In 1971, Leonov was assigned to the Salyut 1 mission, but he and his crew were replaced when Copilot Valery Kubasov fell ill. The three-member crew that did fly, however, died on June 29, 1971 during reentry when an air valve failed. Ten years after Voskhod 2, Alexei Leonov re-entered space in 1975 as commander of the Soyuz 19 mission, the first joint Soviet-U.S. space project. The mission was known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in the United States. Leonov's training included learning the English language and making three visits to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

His friendly demeanor won over many Americans and did much to change Western perceptions of Soviet cosmonauts. On July 15, 1975, Leonov and Valery Kubasov were aboard Soyuz 19 as it lifted off from Baikanor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the same day the Americans launched an Apollo capsule from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Two days later the two spacecraft docked, allowing the crews to rotate between the two spacecraft and conducted mainly ceremonial activities. Leonov was on the American side for five hours and 43 minutes, while Kubasov spent four hours and 57 minutes in the command and docking modules. After being docked for nearly 44 hours, Apollo and Soyuz parted for the first time and were "station-keeping" at a range of 160 feet. The Apollo crew placed its craft between Soyuz and the sun so that the diameter of the service module formed a disk that blocked out the sun. After this experiment, Apollo moved towards Soyuz for the second docking. Three hours later Apollo and Soyuz undocked for the second and final time.

The spacecraft moved to a 130-foot station-keeping distance so that an ultraviolet absorption experiment could be performed. With all the joint flight activities completed, the ships went on their separate ways. On July 21, 1975, the safe landing of Soyuz 19 ended Leonov's career in space. He logged 7.02 days in space on his two flights. He was awarded a second Hero of the Soviet Union award for ASTP. In his career he received the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star awards. Unfortunately it would take another two decades and the fall of the Soviet Union before astronauts and cosmonauts would work together in space again. From 1976 to 1982, Leonov was the commander of the cosmonaut team, and deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. He retired from government service in 1991 with the rank of Major General in the Soviet Air Force. General Leonov next chaired an investment corporation in Moscow. He is an accomplished artist, specializing in painting scenes with space themes. Leonov Crater, on the far side of the Moon, is named for him.

Alexei Leonov quotes: "The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space." "The spacesuit started behaving absolutely different from what it did on the ground" (Referring to his difficulty in ending his spacewalk). "Dear and intelligent people who decided to show all of humanity that we are different ... but can work together." (Recalling the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project). "Remember that time â the insane mistrust, not just for people but between countries." (Referring to the Cold War) "It showed that our country was capable of making a scientific discovery of global importance. We forget that we use the results of space exploration everyday. Cellular telephones, television programming, satellite navigation -- all this is a result of what we did, which became a way of life." © 2005- 2016 The New Mexico Museum of Space History , a Division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs . Photographs not the property of the New Mexico Museum of Space History appear courtesy of NASA image archives.

New Mexico Museum of Space History | PO Box 5430 | Alamogordo, NM 88311-5430 575-437-2840/877-333-6589 Cause of Death for Yuri Gagarin, 1st Man in Space, Finally Revealed By Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | June 17, 2013 02:55pm ET MORE Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly in space, as seen in 1968 before his death in a jet crash. Credit: RSC Energia The circumstances surrounding the death of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, who was killed in a 1968 jet crash, have long been clouded in theories and rumors. Now, the first man to walk in space says he can reveal what really happened to his friend and fellow Russian cosmonaut. Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 became the first man to leave a spacecraft and float in the open vacuum of space, has worked for years to learn what led to Gagarin's death .

He finally gained permission and spoke about the details in an interview released on Friday (June 14) by the state-funded Russia Today (RT) television network. Yuri Gagarin made history by launching on the world's first manned spaceflight on April 12, 1961. He died just shy of his Vostok 1 mission's seventh anniversary, on March 27, 1968, when the MiG-15 fighter jet that he and instructor Vladimir Seryogin were piloting on a routine training flight went down outside a small town near Moscow. [ Photo Gallery: First Man in Space — Yuri Gagarin in Pictures ] Leonov, who had been in the vicinity that day and reported hearing two loud booms in the distance, served on the state commission that investigated the crash. The official findings reported Gagarin and Seryogin had maneuvered to avoid colliding with bird or other object, and as a result, entered a tailspin and plummeted to the ground. "That conclusion is believable to a civilian — [but] not to a professional," Leonov, now 79, explained to RT.

"In fact, everything went down differently." Video still showing former Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, during his interview with the RT television network. Credit: Russia Today Vodka, vent or vertical drop The official explanation of how Yuri Gagarin died did not go unchallenged, and not by Leonov alone. Many theories, ranging from the technical to the conspiratorial, have been raised in the decades since. [ Vostok 1: Yuri Gagarin's Historic Manned Spaceflight Recalled (Video) ] The Soviet government, military and even the KGB looked into some the claims, dismissing rumors that Gagarin had been intoxicated, or that he and Seryogin had been "taking potshots at wild deer from their plane, causing it to spiral out of control," as Leonov recounted in "Two Sides of the Moon," the joint-biography he penned with U.S. astronaut David Scott in 2004. The government's investigations also ruled out sabotage. Documents declassified in 2003 revealed that the KGB had suspected air traffic controllers as having contributed inadvertently to the crash by providing bad weather data.

Gagarin and Seryogin were led to believe that a bank of clouds were higher than they really were, leaving them too little time to recover from a spin, the intelligence agency suggested. Yet another theory, put forth by a retired Soviet Air Force colonel, proposed that the pilot who had previously flown the MiG-15 jet had tampered with or otherwise left an air vent open in the cockpit, leading to Gagarin and Seryogin suffering from oxygen deprivation at altitude. For his part, Leonov held for years that he thought the first loud boom he heard was another jet breaking the sound barrier , followed soon thereafter by the sound of Gagarin's jet hitting the ground. Another pilot's error "We knew that a Su-15 [fighter jet] was scheduled to be tested that day, but it was supposed to be flying at the altitude of 10,000 meters [33,000 feet] or higher, not 450-500 meters [1,480-1,640 feet]," Leonov told RT.

"It was a violation of the flight procedure." A new declassified report confirmed that an unauthorized Sukhoi (Su-15) supersonic jet flew dangerously close to Gagarin's MiG-15. "While afterburning the aircraft reduced its echelon at a distance of 10-15 meters [30-50 ft] in the clouds, passing close to Gagarin, turning his plane and thus sending it into a tailspin — a deep spiral, to be precise — at a speed of 750 kilometers per hour [470 miles per hour]," Leonov said in the television interview. Upon seeing the released report, Leonov also realized that his own account of that day had been recorded incorrectly. The report suggested that he heard the loud booms 15 to 20 seconds apart, when it was actually two seconds. "That suggested that the two jets must have been no less than 50 kilometers apart." Leonov said. Armed with the report's data, a new computer simulation was generated, revealing why Gagarin's jet went down.

"Now, a jet can sink into a deep spiral if a larger, heavier aircraft passes by too close and flips [the jet] over with its backwash. And that is exactly what happened to Gagarin . That trajectory was the only one that corresponded with all our input parameters," Leonov told RT. Leonov was allowed to go public with the story, except for one detail: the Su-15 pilot's name. That pilot, who is now 80, is said to be in poor health. "I was asked not to disclose the pilot's name," Leonov explained. "He is a good test pilot... It will fix nothing." Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @ collectSPACE . Copyright 2013 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. The First Spacewalk The First Spacewalk How the first human to take steps in outer space nearly didn't return to Earth Alexei Leonov did not feel as if he was in motion as he clambered on to the outside of the spacecraft, 500km above the Earth.

Leonov's spacewalk (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) But in reality, he was hurtling around our planet at speeds that are many times faster than a jet aircraft. The vast, vivid geography of our planet stretched out before him - a giant canvas of contrasting colours and textures. He was the first of his species to see our planet in such glorious aspect. The Russian was quickly overwhelmed:  You just can't comprehend it. Only out there can you feel the greatness - the huge size of all that surrounds us.” News of the first ever spacewalk on 18 March 1965 was received with shock and delight. It took place against a battle for supremacy in space between the US and the USSR. The Voskhod 2 mission was hailed as a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and as a blow to American pride. But this triumphant narrative bore little resemblance to what actually took place behind the scenes. Alexei Leonov in 2011 (Getty Images) Leonov, now 80, has given a rare interview to the BBC in which he talks about the series of emergencies that made the trek back to Earth worthy of any Hollywood movie.

Minutes after he stepped into space, Leonov realised his suit had inflated like a balloon, preventing him from getting back inside. Later on, the cosmonauts narrowly avoided being obliterated in a huge fireball when oxygen levels soared inside the craft. And on the way back to Earth, the crew was exposed to enormous G-forces, landing hundreds of kilometres off target in a remote corner of Siberia populated by wolves and bears. Afterwards, the Soviet authorities revealed nothing about the problems. For years, few people knew the truth. This was not unusual. America’s successes and failures took place in the full glare of public attention. But the Soviets were obsessive about controlling the message through secrecy and censorship. Alexei Leonov (top left) with other Vostok and Voskhod crew members Alexei Leonov was born in 1934 in the tiny village of Listvyanka in Central Siberia. He was three when his father was wrongly imprisoned without trial during one of Joseph Stalin’s infamous purges. Leonov in training (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) The Leonovs were labelled subversives and neighbours were encouraged to ransack their home. But Alexei brushed aside this tough start.

He showed a early talent for art, but ended up graduating as a fighter pilot by his early twenties. Not long after graduating, he was invited to compete for the opportunity to go into space. He was successful, and joined the original class of 20 cosmonauts alongside Yuri Gagarin, who was to become the first man in space in April 1961. At this stage, no one knew how the human body would respond to being in outer space. So the cosmonauts were subjected to an intensive training regimen that tested them to their physical and mental limits. Leonov recalls:  You needed to be physically fit. Every day I ran a minimum of 5km and swam 700m.” Ice hockey was banned after several fellow trainees were injured. It was replaced with football, volleyball and basketball. Space travel exposed the body to high G-forces. So the trainees were spun round in centrifuges, sometimes until they passed out. They were also locked in a sensory deprivation chamber. But the room’s oxygen-rich atmosphere made it dangerously flammable inside.

Rocket engineer Sergei Korolev (Detlev Van Ravenswaay/Science Photo Library) In 1961, Valentin Bondarenko accidentally dropped a piece of alcohol-soaked cotton wool on to a hot plate while training in the chamber. He was engulfed in a fireball, dying in hospital hours later from horrific injuries. After that, engineers switched to using normal air. In early 1963, the cosmonauts received a summons to OKB-1, the main centre in Moscow for designing and building spaceships. They were invited to visit by Sergei Korolev, the mastermind behind the USSR’s space programme. The spacecraft looked similar to the space vessels that Gagarin and other cosmonauts had flown in. But one of them was different. It was fitted with a transparent tube about 3m long and 1.2m wide – an airlock. As the curious cosmonauts gathered round this unusual vehicle, Korolev addressed them:  A sailor must be able to swim in the sea.

Likewise, a cosmonaut must be able to swim in outer space.” Then he singled out Leonov and told him: “You, little eagle, put on that suit.” After watching from the sidelines for more than a year, this was the moment Alexei Leonov had been waiting for. One step at a time Alexei Leonov was given two hours to rehearse a spacewalk in one of the new vehicles. Yuri Gagarin (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) After his time was up, he would have to report to Korolev with his thoughts on how best to safely exit and enter the spacecraft. "My heart started thumping,” Leonov says. “How would I do the report?" Leonov quickly overcame his nerves and set about the task. After the briefing concluded, Yuri Gagarin approached him outside:  I think they have selected you. You will be in charge of the spacewalk.” The mission, named Voskhod (Sunrise) 2, required a spacewalker (also the navigator) and a commander to pilot the ship. Leonov lobbied hard for his friend Pavel Belyayev to sit in the commander’s seat.

He got his way, despite doctors’ concerns about a leg injury Belyayev had sustained during parachute training. Belyayev was 10 years older than Leonov and had seen action as a fighter pilot in the final days of World War II, flying sorties against Japan from Russia’s far east. He was courageous and capable. Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev Training for the mission began in earnest. Pavel Belyayev (l) Alexey Leonov (r) travel to Voskhod 2 launch (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) The pair had to learn how to fly and navigate the spacecraft as well as simulate every moment of the spacewalk under weightless conditions. This could only be done on a Tupolev-104 plane flying in a series of parabolic arcs. As the plane went over the top of the arc, the occupants experienced zero gravity for 25 seconds at a time. The Voskhod 2 mission was put together in a tight timeframe. The Soviets were anxious to perform a spacewalk before the Americans and they knew that Nasa was preparing astronaut Ed White for the task.

Dr Asif Siddiqi, from Fordham University in New York, is critical:  The [Voskhod] ships are extremely dangerous because there's not enough safety built in, not enough redundancy. They're one-offs, almost solely for propaganda purposes, and designed to one-up the United States.” But Georgy Grechko, a cosmonaut who flew on several Soviet space missions, says both sides were in a contest:  We did our job - it was complicated and risky. We wanted be ahead of the US, and they wanted to be ahead of us.” Rocket carrying Voskhod 2 before launch (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) “Why do you have the Olympic Games? Because someone wants to be ahead. Why do you have a World Cup?” On the morning of 18 March 1965, the cosmonauts were woken up for their flight. They were given a medical and then observed several traditions that had developed in the years since Gagarin’s launch. Yuri opened a bottle of champagne and poured it into glasses for the cosmonauts to sip.

Then they signed the bottle, making a pledge to drink the rest on their return from space. Afterwards, they urinated on one of the wheels of the bus used to transport them to the launch pad at Baikonur. At 0700 GMT, the R-7 rocket’s engines ignited and propelled the two cosmonauts into the sky. Upon reaching orbit, Belyayev deployed the airlock while Leonov strapped on his life support system. Then, with a slap on the back from Belyayev to see him off, Leonov crawled into the airlock and closed the hatch behind him. Leonov waited patiently while Belyayev equalised the pressure in the airlock with the zero pressure in space. Launch of Voskhod 2 rocket (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) This would help purge nitrogen gas from Leonov’s body, protecting him against decompression sickness, also known as “the bends”. Eventually, the all-clear was given to open the external hatch. As Leonov looked out at the Earth, night was turning to day, and Africa filled his field of view.

Sergey S Pozdnyakov, general director of Zvezda, which manufactures the spacesuits for Russia’s cosmonauts, says it would have been difficult to know how Leonov would react next: “The main doubt was the psychological condition of the person who was in outer space. In the ship, you have walls, you have communications with Earth, you are protected.”  But to go into outer space… the stress is, in my opinion, so high, that to predict how a person will behave in this situation is impossible.” Floating free Leonov climbed on to the rim of the airlock where a movie camera would record footage of his historic step into the unknown. To observers in space, the Earth continually seems to be turning beneath them. In fact, both the planet turning on its axis and the movement of the spacecraft determines which parts of Earth are visible below. From his vantage point, Leonov could now see Greece, the Balkans, the Crimea and the Baltic. The view below him was staggering – our planet’s geography laid out in a colossal panorama.

 My feeling was that I was a grain of sand.” Leonov was tethered to the airlock with a 5m-long “umbilical cord” that prevented him from drifting into space. The cosmonaut decided to test the limits of his movement by launching himself off the side of the spacecraft. He immediately went into a spin, but the cord pulled him to a stop. When Leonov got the instruction to come back inside the spacecraft, he had been outside for 10 minutes. He’d proved that the Soviet space suit worked in open space. Reluctantly, he prepared to return. At this point the cosmonaut realised something was wrong. The lack of atmospheric pressure in space had slowly caused his spacesuit to inflate like a balloon. He recalls: Alexei Leonov's leg during the first space walk (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library)  My suit was becoming deformed, my hands had slipped out of the gloves, my feet came out of the boots. The suit felt loose around my body. I had to do something.” "I couldn’t pull myself back using the cord.

And what’s more with this misshapen suit it would be impossible to fit through the airlock." In five minutes he would be in the Earth’s shadow, and plunged into total darkness. Without telling ground control, the cosmonaut decided to bleed half of the air out of his spacesuit through a valve in its lining. This risked starving his body of oxygen, but if he couldn't get back inside the capsule, he’d be dead anyway. Leonov let out a little oxygen at a time to reduce the pressure. But as he did so, he started to feel the first hints of decompression sickness. "  I began to get pins and needles in my legs and hands. I was entering the danger zone, I knew this could be fatal.” He started coiling the cord in order to haul himself back. When he finally reached the airlock, he pushed the camera in, grabbed the sides and lurched through head first. The extreme physical exertion had caused his temperature to soar; he was now at risk of heatstroke and sweating uncontrollably. The globules filled his helmet, obscuring his vision. Leonov was supposed to re-enter the airlock feet first.

Getting in the wrong way meant he had to turn himself around in the cramped space to make sure the umbilical cord was inside and the hatch was locked. He says: “It was the most difficult thing: I’m in this suit and I had to turn around in the airlock. But with the perspiration, I couldn’t see anything.”  I don’t normally sweat much, but on that day I lost 6kg in weight.” After curling around in his bulky suit, in such a narrow space, Leonov finally made it back inside the craft. He sat back down in his seat next to Belyayev and hurriedly removed his helmet so that he could wipe his eyes. The airlock had now served its purpose, but when the cosmonauts fired the small explosive charges to eject it into space, the kick caused the spacecraft to rotate. Belyayev and Leonov in their capsule (prior to mission) (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) The effect was disorienting for the cosmonauts, but nothing could be done to correct it. Then they became aware of another, more serious problem. The spacecraft’s instruments showed oxygen levels steadily climbing at an alarming rate.

The loss of Valentin Bondarenko, the man who died after dropping a piece of cotton wool, had taught the Soviets a grim lesson. As the oxygen pressure soared, Voskhod 2’s cabin became dangerously flammable. The cosmonauts frantically worked to lower the temperature and the humidity. This halted the relentless rise in oxygen pressure, although it remained high for some time. Eventually, the level began to fall. Leonov explains:  Fortunately the engines produced no sparks. A spark would have caused an explosion and we would have been vaporized.” Several hours would pass before the time came for Leonov and Belyayev to prepare for their return to Earth. But minutes before the retro-rockets were supposed to fire, kicking off the descent through the atmosphere, the spacecraft’s automatic re-entry system failed. The men would have to fire the rockets manually – something that had never been done, and required incredible precision. If the burn was too short, the Voskhod 2 would hit the atmosphere at too shallow an angle, bouncing back into space. But if the burn continued for too long, it would come down at too steep an angle.

This would cause it to plummet at much too high a speed - and be destroyed. With the right burn duration, at the right time, the capsule would plunge through the atmosphere on a trajectory that would bring it down safely. The rocket firing went well, but the cosmonauts had little control over where they would land. The best they could hope for was that the craft would touch down somewhere in the Soviet Union’s vast landmass. Lost in the woods During the descent to Earth, the spacecraft’s equipment module, which contained engines and propellant, failed to fully detach as planned. Leonov home from space (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) The cosmonauts were exposed to high G forces as both the equipment and descent modules of the spacecraft started tumbling. However, the ordeal ended when the cable linking the modules burned through, freeing the cosmonauts’ capsule. The descent module floated through the clouds on its parachute. It touched down in deepest Siberia, in the middle of a forest of birch and fir trees. Leonov recalls:  We landed and opened the hatch. The air was cold, it rushed in.

We set up our radio channel and began to broadcast our coded signal.” “Only after seven hours did a monitoring station in West Germany report that they had heard the coded signal which I had sent.” Both cosmonauts had grown up at the forest’s edge, and understood its dangers. It was home to wolves and bears, and March was mating season, when the animals were at their most aggressive. After a few more hours, the cosmonauts heard the unmistakable thud of helicopter blades. They walked to a clearing, where they saw that it was a civilian chopper. The pilot and crew were keen to rescue them, throwing down a rope ladder. But it was too flimsy for Leonov and Belyayev to climb in their heavy spacesuits. They declined the offer. The helicopter crew must have told others of the men’s whereabouts. As other aircraft began to circle above them, crews threw all kinds of items out for the cosmonauts: a bottle of cognac - which smashed the instant it hit the snow - a blunt axe and warm clothes, most of which got caught in the branches of the tall trees.

Belyayev and Leonov are welcomed home (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) Private aircraft were and are relatively common in Siberia, because of the vast distances to travel. As it got dark, the cosmonauts realised they would have to wring the moisture out of their suits to avoid frostbite. Leonov had perspired so much on the spacewalk that his sweat was now sloshing around in the suit, up to his knees. There was no way to cover the hatch opening, so they would have to cope as best they could as temperatures dropped to -25C. Leonov remembers that he and Belyayev awoke to the sounds of a rescue party approaching:  They landed 9km away and came on skis. They made a little hut for us and brought us a big cauldron which we filled with water and put over a fire. Then we washed in it.” The men had to spend another night in the forest, but this time it was in the more comfortable surroundings of their new log cabin.

The next day Belyayev and Leonov donned skis for the 9km journey to a clearing where a helicopter was waiting to fly them to the city of Perm. Leonov recalls:  When we flew out of there, the rescuers said they saw wolf tracks around the spacecraft.” “Wolves are very smart, they came to look at what had come down from the sky into their territory.” Belyayev and Leonov are welcomed home (Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library) From Perm, the men were flown back to Baikonur, where they were greeted on the runway by Korolev and Gagarin. During a mission debrief, Leonov had to explain why he had broken protocol by venting his air into space without telling ground control. He responded: “What would you have done if I’d told you? You would have created a commission. The commission would have selected a chairman, and the chairman would talk to me.

 I knew I only had 30 minutes left and I didn’t want ground control to panic.” Sergei Korolev, the chief space designer, backed him, saying: “Alexei is right.” After the cosmonauts returned, the authorities said nothing to the press about the problems encountered on the mission. It took many years for the truth to emerge about the first, historic spacewalk mission. For years, the Soviet space programme was seen by some in the West as a less sophisticated pretender to Nasa, whose achievements in the era of the Moon landings are viewed as a high bar in the human exploration of space. But it was the space pioneers of the Soviet Union who blazed a trail - taking risks, making mistakes but ultimately pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. “If there are some people who think that what we did was primitive, not very interesting, not worthwhile - let them fly into space, go for a spacewalk and experience the air leaking from your suit, or a safety hatch refusing to shut,” says cosmonaut Georgy Grechko.

“Then they will understand that our pride and happiness is deserved.” Find out more Russia Lied About How The First Man In Space Died Russia Lied About How The First Man In Space Died Go to permalink On March 27, 1968, the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, died. He was in a MiG-15 on a routine training flight with his instructor when his plane crashed. The official explanation has been that he had to avoid a "foreign" object, but new information from Cosmonaut Alexi Leonov tells a different story. Advertisement Leonov was the first man to walk in space , and much later was also on the committee that investigated Gagarin's crash. Leonov has been trying to reveal the truth of what happened for over 20 years, and the information has only now been de-classified, prompting Leonov to explain the truth of what happened in an interview with Russia Today .

Of the official "foreign object" explanation — which could mean a goose, a hot air balloon, a squirrel in a home-made bark ultralight — Leonov says “That conclusion is believable to a civilian – not to a professional,” and reveals that the truth is that another fighter jet, a Sukhoi Su-15, flew much too close to Gagarin's MiG. Advertisement The issue was that the Su-15 was flying far lower than it was supposed to. As Leonov tells RT: “We knew that a Su-15 was scheduled to be tested that day, but it was supposed to be flying at the altitude of 10,000 meters or higher, not 450-500 meters. It was a violation of the flight procedure.” When the Su-15 flew so close to Gagarin's plane, the passage caused the MiG to go into an uncontrollable spin, similar to that scene in Top Gun I bet at least half of you are picturing right now.

Leonov explains to Russia Today: “While afterburning the aircraft reduced its echelon at a distance of 10-15 meters in the clouds, passing close to Gagarin, turning his plane and thus sending it into a tailspin – a deep spiral, to be precise – at a speed of 750 kilometers per hour," The involved and intense 40+ year cover up was mostly to hide that such a lapse in air-traffic logistics could have happened so close to Moscow and to someone so important. In fact, Gagarin was deemed too valuable a public relations tool to ever be sent into space again, especially after the death of Vladimir Komarov in Soyuz 1 , a mission Gagarin himself felt was launched prematurely. Gagarin had proven to be a PR handful after his flight, behaving in ways the Soviet leadership found problematic, such as diving out of a second-story window when his wife caught him with another woman. Because of the Soviets' desire to keep Gagarin as a pure propaganda tool, there has been much speculation that the accident that took his life was planned by the KGB, along with many other conspiracy theories. Advertisement Sponsored The truth is more mundane, but no less tragic.

One of the conditions of finally allowing Leonov to reveal the truth is that the Su-15's pilot remains anonymous. As Leonov wisely points out, Advertisement I was asked not to disclose the pilot’s name. He is a good test pilot…It will fix nothing,” Learning to Spacewalk | Space | Air & Space Magazine Air & Space Magazine A cosmonaut remembers the exhilaration-and terror-of his first space mission Voskhod 2 was Leonov's first spaceflight. Before becoming a cosmonaut, he flew MiGs. (NASA ) By Alexei Leonov Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe January 2005 In March 1965, at the age of 30, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk in history, beating out American rival Ed White on Gemini 4 by almost three months. Floating outside his tiny Voskhod 2 capsule for 10 exhilarating minutes, Leonov felt, he writes, “like a seagull with its wings outstretched, soaring high above the Earth.” In keeping with the secrecy of the Soviet space program, few people—not even his family—knew about the spacewalk ahead of time.

Even less well known was how close Leonov and his crewmate, Pavel (Pasha) Belyayev, came to dying that day. In his recently published book, Two Sides of the Moon, written with U.S. Apollo astronaut David Scott, Leonov recounts the spacewalk and its even more dramatic aftermath. From This Story When my four-year-old daughter, Vika, saw me take my first steps in space, I later learned, she hid her face in her hands and cried. “What is he doing? What is he doing?” she wailed. “Please tell Daddy to get back inside.” My elderly father, too, was upset. Not understanding that the purpose of my mission was to show that man could survive in open space, he expressed his distress to journalists who had gathered at my parents’ home. “Why is he acting like a juvenile delinquent?” he shouted in frustration. “Everyone else can complete their mission properly, inside the spacecraft. What is he doing clambering about outside? Somebody must tell him to get back inside immediately.

He must be punished for this.” His anger soon gave way to pride when he heard a live broadcast of President Leonid Brezhnev’s message of congratulations beamed up to me from the Kremlin via mission control. “We members of the Politburo are here sitting and watching what you are doing. We are proud of you,” Brezhnev said. “We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.” As I pulled myself back toward the airlock, I heard Pasha talking to me: “It’s time to come back in.” I realized I had been floating free in space for over 10 minutes. In that moment my mind flickered back for a second to my childhood, to my mother opening the window at home and calling to me as I played outside with my friends, “Lyosha, it’s time to come inside now.” With some reluctance I acknowledged that it was time to reenter the spacecraft. Our orbit would soon take us away from the sun and into darkness. It was then I realized how deformed my stiff spacesuit had become, owing to the lack of atmospheric pressure.

My feet had pulled away from my boots and my fingers from the gloves attached to my sleeves, making it impossible to reenter the airlock feet first. I had to find another way of getting back inside quickly, and the only way I could see to do this was pulling myself into the airlock gradually, head first. Even to do this, I would carefully have to bleed off some of the high-pressure oxygen in my suit, via a valve in its lining. I knew I might be risking oxygen starvation, but I had no choice. If I did not reenter the craft, within the next 40 minutes my life support would be spent anyway. The only solution was to reduce the pressure in my suit by opening the pressure valve and letting out a little oxygen at a time as I tried to inch inside the airlock. At first I thought of reporting what I planned to do to mission control. But I decided against it. I did not want to create nervousness on the ground. And anyway, I was the only one who could bring the situation under control. But I could feel my temperature rising dangerously high, with a rush of heat from my feet traveling up my legs and arms, due to the immense physical exertion all the maneuvering involved.

It was taking far longer than it was supposed to. Even when I at last managed to pull myself entirely into the airlock, I had to perform another almost impossible maneuver. I had to curl my body around in order to close the airlock, so Pasha could activate the mechanism to equalize pressure between it and the spacecraft. Single Page Previous Page 1 of 4 Next 1 2 3 4 Like this article? Alexei Leonov, First Man to Walk in Space Reality check media Alexei Leonov, First Man to Walk in Space ‘I was surrounded by stars, floating without control,’ recalls the cosmonaut, who made history 50 years ago on a mission that nearly cost him his life Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, right, at an awarding ceremony in Moscow’s Kremlin | Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev, AP This article originally appeared in The Guardian Fifty years ago, Alexei Leonov opened the airlock of his tiny space capsule, which was orbiting the Earth, and stepped into the void. For 12 minutes the Soviet cosmonaut floated above our planet, tethered to his ship by a 16ft cable.

In doing so, Leonov became the first person to walk in space. It was an event of extraordinary importance – for spacewalks have since become a mainstay of most major manned endeavours in Earth orbit. More than 200 astronauts – floating free in space on extra-vehicular activity, or EVAs – have since carried out tasks ranging from the repair of the Hubble space telescope to the construction of the international space station. As Leonov told the Observer: “It is impossible to imagine the development of any serious space project or experiment without EVAs today.” Spacewalks can be dangerous, however, and Leonov’s own mission very nearly ended in disaster after it was afflicted by a series of mishaps that will form the core of a new film, First Time , scheduled for release in Russia next year. It will tell a story that is every bit as dramatic as Apollo 13, the US lunar mission – filmed with Tom Hanks – that also came close to catastrophe. Leonov – now 80 – is scheduled to give a first-person account of his spacewalk, and other aspects of his career as chief cosmonaut for the Soviet Union, when he speaks at the Science Museum in London this month.

6ce4958f-831c-4430-a253-ea9289a0e9d9-2060x1405.jpeg An artist’s rendering of the first space walk by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov | Photo: Rykoff Collection, Corbis In 1965 the Soviet Union appeared to be well ahead of the US in the race to land the first humans on the Moon. It had put the first satellite, the first animal, the first man, and the first woman into orbit and, knowing that America was planning to allow one of its astronauts, Ed White, to take a spacewalk in June that year, it decided to add another first to its list of space achievements by getting a Soviet cosmonaut to do an EVA before then. Leonov, who had trained as a cosmonaut with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was selected for the task. On 18 March he was blasted into orbit in a two-man Voskhod capsule which he shared with his commander, Pavel Belyayev.

After completing one orbit, Leonov was given the go-ahead to begin his spacewalk and crawled into the craft’s makeshift airlock. He opened its hatch, slid out and floated into space to begin his mission. Leonov still remembers the utter silence he experienced when he emerged from his spaceship. “It was so quiet I could even hear my heart beat,” he told the Observer. “I was surrounded by stars and was floating without much control. I will never forget the moment. I also felt an incredible sense of responsibility. Of course, I did not know that I was about to experience the most difficult moments of my life – getting back into the capsule.” Leonov’s spacewalk very nearly ended in disaster. In the vacuum of outer space, his spacesuit began to balloon out of shape and its fabric began to stiffen dangerously. His hands slipped out of his gloves, his feet came out of his boots, and Leonov could no longer get through his spaceship’s airlock. Even worse, the craft was hurtling towards Earth’s shadow. In five minutes, the cosmonaut realised he would be plunged into total darkness. So he began bleeding air from his suit from a valve in its inner lining.

Very slowly his suit deflated, just as Leonov began to notice the first signs of decompression sickness. “I could feel pins and needles in my hands and legs,” he recalled. Leonov squeezed himself headfirst through the airlock and just managed to close its hatch behind him, his temperature by now soaring through the extreme exertion of his return to the spaceship. Leonov slumped back in his seat beside Belyayev. His woes were far from over, however. First, a charge was fired to blast the airlock – which was no longer needed – into space. The explosion caused Voskhod 2 to rotate, disorienting its two crewmen. At the same time, instruments showed oxygen levels in the capsule were now climbing at an alarming rate, threatening to trigger a blaze that would have burned both men alive. Several hours passed before Leonov and Belyayev could get the craft’s oxygen levels back to normal. Emigrate While You Still Can! Learn More... By now, the spaceship was scheduled to return to Earth. However, the two cosmonauts discovered its automatic re-entry system no longer worked. So the pair fired the craft’s re-entry rockets manually.

This manoeuvre should have separated the landing capsule, containing Leonov and Belyayev, from the spaceship’s orbital module. “A few seconds after the firing of the engine, we felt a jolt as the orbital module separated from our cabin – but something went wrong,” said Leonov. “We felt a tugging force pulling us back! I looked out of a window and saw the orbital module was still connected to us by a communications cable. As a result, both modules were spinning rapidly as we fell steeply to Earth!” Voskhod 2 was plunging to destruction, but was saved by the heat of re-entry which burnt through the communications cable. The landing module separated and its parachutes were deployed. “We were safe,” he said. 4cb62362-4f91-43e4-a35c-1c9f4c2cfa2a-2060x1480.jpeg Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 1965 | Photo: Associated Press The crewmen’s problems had still not reached an end. Their craft landed 2,000 kilometres downrange from its intended target and plunged into a dense Siberian forest.

It took two days before a rescue mission reached the pair, who had to huddle in their tiny capsule in temperatures well below zero. “We spent two cold nights in the forest,” said Leonov. “We did not meet wolves or bears, but we knew that there were many of them around. It was spring time and the animals were very aggressive. Once again, we were lucky!” At the time, the Russians hailed the mission as a complete success. In fact, it had come close to ending in disaster, though these near-catastrophes were not revealed until many years after the return of Voskhod 2. Belyayev died five years after the mission from peritonitis caused by an operation on a stomach ulcer. Leonov went on to become a distinguished cosmonaut. Indeed, had events unravelled in only slightly different ways, Leonov might have become the first Soviet cosmonaut to walk on the Moon. In the 60s, the Soviet Union had started to design its own rival to the US Apollo lunar programme. “Our Lunar Orbital Craft (LOC) was going to carry two cosmonauts into orbit around the Moon,” said Leonov.

“It would act as ‘a mother ship’ for a lander which would land me on the surface.” The rocket that would have taken the LOC and lander to the Moon was known as the N1, but had to be scrapped after several test flight failures. Leonov never made it to the Moon, but he did take part in one further notable space mission. He commanded the Soviet Soyuz capsule that docked with an Apollo capsule in space in 1975, a rendezvous that marked the end of the space race that had begun so well for the Russians in the late 50s but which ended so conclusively in US victory when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on to the Moon in July 1969. Later, Leonov – who is also a gifted artist – was appointed commander of the Soviet cosmonaut team and given the title chief cosmonaut. He retired in 1991. Alexei Leonov will give a lecture, hosted by the British Interplanetary Society, at the Science Museum, London, at 7pm on 21 May.

Question: Which Russian was the first man to walk in space?
Answer: Alexei Leonov