At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet bloc scored a massive victory in the “space race” when its cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to walk in space.
The historic milestone was achieved on March 18, 1965, when Leonov exited his spacecraft through an inflatable airlock and floated in orbit while being tethered for 12 minutes and 9 seconds during the Voskhod 2 mission.
A spacewalk, officially known as an Extravehicular Activity (EVA), refers to when an astronaut leaves the safety of their spacecraft to operate in the vacuum of space. In fact, it is called a “spacewalk” because astronauts move around and perform tasks while floating in microgravity.
And it felt impossible until Leonov demonstrated that it could be done.
During a spacewalk, astronauts exit the spacecraft wearing a customised spacesuit that provides oxygen, temperature control, radiation and micrometeoroid protection, and communication. The astronaut is tethered to the spacecraft for safety and to prevent drifting away, and they use handrails, tools, and sometimes robotic arms to move.
Leonov’s spacewalk was perhaps the second biggest shocker for the US after the communist bloc sent Yuri Gagarin into space in April 1961, just one month before the American astronaut Alan Shepard, who took his space journey in May 1961.
With the space walk, the Soviet Union beat the US by nearly 3 months. On June 3, 1965, Major Edward H. White II became the first American astronaut to walk in space when he stepped out of his Gemini 4.
The Historic First Spacewalk
Once the US and the USSR achieved the milestone of sending an astronaut to space, they found themselves thinking, “What’s next?”
So, they decided to go a step further and walk in space.
For the Soviets, this was crucial to maintaining their advantage over the US in the space race, whereas the Americans saw it as an opportunity to finally level the playing field with the Soviet Union and set a new precedent. But more importantly, both Cold War rivals viewed achieving this milestone as a major propaganda victory, demonstrating superior technology, engineering, and human capability in space.
By the early 1960s, before NASA’s Gemini program could mature, Soviet chief designer Sergei Korolev modified surplus Vostok capsules into the Voskhod spacecraft to score a quick victory that would, in the future, pave the way for lunar missions.
To make room for donning a spacesuit, the three-seat Voskhod spacecraft was transformed into a two-seater. Additionally, the Soviet engineers created an inflatable airlock for space use and a unique spacesuit for extravehicular activities.
The Voskhod 2 mission was to be crewed by Pavel Belyayev, appointed commander, and Alexei Leonov, chosen as pilot. Both the cosmonauts were trained in a life-size Voskhod-2 model aeroplane that simulated weightlessness.
However, no training could adequately prepare them for the actual mission.
Voskhod 2 lifted off from Baikonur at 07:00 UTC (10:00 Moscow time) on March 18, 1965. Leonov wore the Berkut spacesuit, a white, modified Sokol-1 with a metal backpack that provided about 45 minutes of breathing and cooling essential for walking in space.
Once in orbit, the crew inflated and pressurised the Volga airlock while they were still inside the pressurised cabin.
When Leonov stepped out, he became the first human to experience the vastness of space firsthand. In orbit, Alexei Leonov carried out research and observations. He used a 5.35-meter-long cable to enter and exit the airlock five times, but the total EVA was a single continuous 12-minute period.
The other crew member, Pavel Belyayev, used a TV camera and telemetry to monitor Leonov’s operations in space.
The onboard television equipment captured the procedure, which was then seen from Earth, and Leonov sketched a quick orbital sunrise, the first artwork created in space.
However, the first historic spacewalk was not without challenges.
After 8 minutes of free floating in space, the vacuum caused Leonov’s suit to over-inflate and stiffen significantly.
Before he knew, the suit swelled outward, Leonov’s feet detached from the boots, and his fingers drifted away from the glove tips. It grew too big and stiff to pass through the 65-cm airlock hatch again. He could no longer reach controls or bend with ease—the first walk became a battle for survival.
“After 8 minutes of free floating, I clearly felt the volume of my spacesuit changed… My fingers’ tips no longer felt the glove tips, my feet were floating in my boots… the main thing was, I was unable to reach the shutter release on my camera,” he later stated.
Leonov decided to release some of the oxygen from his suit to decompress enough to pass through the hatch and gain control.
To regain flexibility and movement, Leonov opened a valve in the suit’s lining to bleed off oxygen by dropping pressure below the safe 27.4 kPa limit. This allowed him to bend his joints again, but it was a desperate gamble because he also simultaneously risked decompression sickness and oxygen starvation that could kill him.
He later revealed to the press that he had perspired so much that the sweat sloshed around inside his suit.
While he regained his mobility, Leonov still struggled to enter the airlock.
It became impossible to re-enter the airlock feet-first as planned, so he had to go headfirst, breaking protocol.
Despite this, he got stuck sideways while trying to turn and close the outer hatch in the narrow 1.2-meter-diameter airlock, as per publicly available information. “I literally had to fold myself to do this… I spent tremendous effort trying to do this,” he later revealed.
After a lot of effort, Leonov managed to somehow crawl back into the cabin, drenched and exhausted, heart racing. Belyayev repressurised the cabin, and they jettisoned the airlock.
The difficulties didn’t end there.
Soon, the spacecraft’s oxygen levels began to rise dangerously, meaning a single spark could trigger a massive explosion and turn the whole spacecraft into a ball of fire in a second. It took about seven anxious hours, after which an emergency valve was activated, helping stabilise the atmosphere.
After this, the orientation system malfunctioned, causing Voskhod-2 to spin erratically and further escalating the mayhem, forcing the crew to manually stabilise it.
The chaos snowballed, and the automatic landing system malfunctioned during re-entry. This forced the crew to execute the first-ever manual landing in spaceflight history.
The two landed deep in the Siberian wilderness while operating manually.
When the two opened the spacecraft’s hatch using its explosive bolts, they were immediately exposed to the elements in an inhospitable, cold environment.
“We were only too aware that the taiga where we had landed was the habitat of bears and wolves,” Leonov later wrote. “It was spring, the mating season, when both animals are at their most aggressive.”
Hours later, a helicopter spotted them, but they were unable to climb the rope ladder lowered to them because of the size of their spacesuits. The two waited for help in the wilderness for about 2-3 days, with the temperature dropping to -30 °C overnight.
Finally, the weary cosmonauts had to ski nine kilometres to a clearing where a helicopter could land, only for a rescue team to arrive on foot.
The spacewalk itself proved that humans could work in space, but the near-disaster was kept secret for years. “It was so quiet I could even hear my heartbeat,” 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,” stated.
Leonov later became the commander of Soyuz-Apollo, the first-ever joint US-Soviet mission in 1975. But today, he is remembered as the first man to walk freely in space and as the one who put the Soviet Union ahead of the US in the space race.
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