Alexei Leonov Becomes the First Man to Walk in Space - 60 Years Ago Today
Alexei Leonov’s first extravehicular activity (EVA) in history lasted only 12 minutes, but rapidly turned into a nightmare for the cosmonaut. His spacesuit was rigid under pressure, which made any movement very difficult. He could not take pictures as planned and the cord connecting him to the spacecraft became twisted sending him tumbling. With great difficulty he managed to reenter the airlock but then became stuck and unable to close the hatch behind him. Without permission from the ground station, he opened the valves on his suit to reduce the inner pressure to regain enough flexibility to close the airlock. (Content and Image Credit: European Space Agency)
Alexei Leonov Becomes the First Man to Walk in Space - 60 Years Ago Today
Sixty years ago today, on March 18, 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first person to float freely outside a spacecraft in Earth orbit when he ventured from Voskhod 2. Famously, Alexei displayed nerves of steel when his spacesuit expanded in the vacuum of space so much that he was unable to squeeze back into the spacecraft. Making a hair-raising decision (and without permission from ground control), he opened a valve on his suit to let enough air escape for him to enter the airlock. His spacewalk lasted only 12 minutes but proved that astronauts could work outside a spacecraft. Alexei Leonov passed away in 2019 at age 85.
His career as a cosmonaut started when he joined the Chuguyev Air Force School in Kharkov, Ukraine, to qualify as a parachute instructor in the Soviet Air Force.
In March 1960 he was selected for the first corps of Soviet cosmonauts with 19 others, including Yuri Gagarin, first human to fly in space. Originally he was considered as a pilot for Vostok 1 but then became back-up for Vostok 5. His goals were much higher however, he made no mystery of the fact that he wanted to be the first man on the Moon.
Finally he was selected to fly on Voskhod 2, a two-seat version of Vostok, with Pavel Belyayev. The main objective of the mission was to carry out a spacewalk before the US astronauts could do so from their new Gemini capsule. The mission was launched on March 18, 1965. Since the Voskhod could not be depressurized, an inflatable airlock was deployed from the hatch. On the second orbit, Leonov entered the airlock to leave the spacecraft and venture outside.
This first extravehicular activity (EVA) in history lasted only 12 minutes, but rapidly turned into a nightmare for the cosmonaut. His spacesuit was rigid under pressure, which made any movement very difficult. He could not take pictures as planned and the cord connecting him to the spacecraft became twisted sending him tumbling. With great difficulty he managed to reenter the airlock but then became stuck and unable to close the hatch behind him.
Without permission from the ground station, he opened the valves on his suit to reduce the inner pressure to 0.27 bars, sufficient to regain enough flexibility to close the airlock. When he finally reentered the space capsule he was exhausted and several liters of sweat would be recovered from his spacesuit on his return to Earth.
Unfortunately the return did not go as planned either. The primary retrorocket misfired and the backup had to be activated. Then the service module failed to separate and burnt on reentry. The destabilized capsule ended up landing in the Urals, way beyond the recovery area. The two cosmonauts had to spend a night in forest surrounded by wolves, before being rescued the next day.
Alexei was always clear that he aimed much farther, he made no secret of the fact that he wanted to be the first man on the Moon.
By late 1966, Leonov’s success had been largely surpassed by the US EVAs conducted during the Gemini program, and the Soviet Union was eagerly trying to score new ‘firsts’ in the space race. Alexei Leonov commenced training for a circumlunar flight on a modified Soyuz vehicle.
Unmanned rehearsals were successfully flown in September and November 1968, and he was ready for the first manned mission around the Moon, scheduled for February 1969. NASA however sped up its own plans and sent Apollo 8 to the Moon in December 1968. Unlike Apollo, the Russian vehicle would be unable to enter actual lunar orbit and the program was cancelled.
Later in 1968, Leonov began training for a more ambitious mission. He was one of the three cosmonauts selected to pilot the LK, a small lunar lander that the Soviets wanted to send to the Moon on top of their gigantic N1 rocket before late 1970. But this Soviet equivalent of the mighty Saturn V suffered two dramatic launch failures.
The second in July 1969 occurred only three weeks before the dramatic success of Apollo 11 and destroyed the launch complex in Baikonur. The Soviet manned lunar program was shelved and Leonov’s last hopes to land on the Moon vanished.
He made his second spaceflight in 1975 with another historic event in space, the docking of a Soyuz and US Apollo spacecraft. For the first time a Soviet launch was broadcast live worldwide and two days later they rendezvoused with the last of the Apollo spacecraft, which was fitted with a special docking adapter.
On July 17, 1975 at 19:19 GMT, the hatches between the Soviet and US spacecraft were opened and Leonov shook hands with NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford. The two crews conducted joint experiments for two days before separating. It would be 19 years before a US and a Russian spacecraft docked together again.
On his return, Leonov was named head of the cosmonaut corps but he resigned in January 1982 to become deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, known as 'Star City.' After retiring in 1991 he became vice president of Alfa Bank, the largest private commercial bank in Russia.
Leonov was awarded numerous honors during his careeer. He had a 33-km diameter crater on the far side of the Moon named after him as well as a main-belt asteroid (5154 Leonov). Also named after him was the fictional spaceship that explored Jupiter in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “2010: Odyssey Two.”
For more information:
https://www.esa.int/About_Us/50_years_of_ESA/Alexei_Leonov_the_first_spacewalker_passes_away
https://www.esa.int/About_Us/50_years_of_ESA/Alexei_Leonov_The_artistic_spaceman
https://www.astromart.com/news/show/world-celebrates-50-years-of-spacewalks
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