Was The First Person To Ever Walk In Space

The first person to walk in space has Gone West. Alexei Leonov passed away in Russia at the age of 85, according to CBS News via Roscosmos.

Leonov was the first human to exit a space capsule in orbit during a mission in 1965. He was joined on the Voskhod 2 mission by Cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev, and both men nearly died during the mission.

Air & Space magazine wrote in 2005 that as Leonov pulled himself back towards the capsule following the EVA, he realized how deformed his spacesuit had become. He was unable to re-enter the capsule feet-first, as they had trained. The only way to get back into the spacecraft was head-first, which required him to bleed off some oxygen from the suit so he could fit.

But that was not the end of the mission's problems. The spacecraft suffered a navigation malfunction which brought them back to Earth far from their intended landing area. The spend the night inside the capsule, which landed in a snowbank in Siberia, while timber wolves investigated the spacecraft. Rescuers reached them the next day, but they still had to ski about 5 miles to an area where helicopters could land to extract them.

Leonov was also the commander of the Soviet spacecraft that participated in the Apollo-Soyuz mission. He remained friends with his American counterparts for the remainder of his life, and several marked is passing with tributes, including one from Astronaut Jack Fischer, who was about to embark on a 6.5-hour EVA aboard the International Space Station. "Here's a toast to a great man whose kindness and mentorship impacted so many explorers," Fischer Tweeted. "On a day when two astronauts carry on the spacewalking tradition he started, his legacy is obvious."

(Image from file)

FMI: Source report
Source report