Portal:Spaceflight/Selected biography/August 2008

Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov (Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов), (born 30 May 1934 in Listvyanka, Kemerovo Oblast, USSR), is a retired Soviet/Russian cosmonaut and Air Force General who, on 18 March 1965, became the first human to walk in space.

Leonov was selected as a member of the first cosmonaut group in 1960. His spacewalk was originally to have taken place on the Vostok 11 mission, but this was cancelled, and instead happened on the Voskhod 2 flight. He was outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes, connected to the craft by a 1.5 m tether. At the end of the 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 was to have been commander of the ill-fated 1971 Soyuz 11 mission to Salyut 1, the first manned space station, but his crew was replaced with the backup after Cosmonaut Valery Kubasov was suspected to have tuberculosis. This crew were subsequently killed when the spacecraft depressurised in space. On his next trip into space, Leonov commanded the Soviet side of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Soyuz 19. From 1976 to 1982, Leonov was the commander of the cosmonaut team ("Chief Cosmonaut"), and deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, where he oversaw crew training. He retired in 1991.

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