Portal:Space exploration/Biography/Week 6 2007

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General Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov, Soviet Air Force (Ret.) (Russian: Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов; born May 30, 1934 in Listvyanka, USSR) is a retired Soviet/Russian cosmonaut who, on March 18, 1965 became the first person to walk in space.

Leonov was one of the 20 air force pilots selected as the first cosmonaut group in 1960. His spacewalk was originally to have taken place on the Vostok 11 mission, but this was cancelled, and the historic event happened on the Voskhod 2 flight instead. He was outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes on March 18, 1965, connected to the craft by a five-foot tether. At the end of the 12 minute spacewalk, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not reenter the airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, and was barely able to get back inside the capsule. Leonov had spent some eighteen months undergoing intense weightlessness training for the mission.