The first person to walk in space died

Soviet astronaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space in 1965, died at the age of 85.

Alexei Leonov died at Leonov Hospital in Moscow on 11 October after a long illness. Astronaut Oleg Kononenko expressed his mourning over Leonov's departure and emphasized that this was "a great loss to the planet".

Astronaut Alexei Leonov.(Photo: NBC).

Leonov was born in Siberia. His family moved to the city of Kaliningrad in western Russia in 1948. When he was an air pilot, he was selected for the 1960 astronaut training program. He attended training with Yuri Gagarin, The first man to fly into space, and quickly became close friends.

On March 18, 1965, Leonov flew into space on Voskhod 2. When reaching orbit, Leonov went out to make the first space walk in human history at an altitude of 475 km. Connected to the spacecraft with a 4.8 m long cable, the astronaut floats above Earth for 12 minutes.

In the vacuum of the universe, Leonov's traveling clothes began to swell abnormally. His limbs slipped out of his gloves and boots. Leonov may not fit into the pressurized compartment of the train. Worse, the astronaut realized there was only 5 minutes before the ship was about to fly into the shadowy region of the Earth, where everything was completely dark. He drained the air out of his suit and entered the pressurized chamber by poking his head in first. While Leonov struggled around in the cramped compartment, his body temperature rose nearly to the point of shocking heat.

Upon returning to Earth, Leonov and his partner, astronaut Pavel Belyayev, fell into a forest on the Ural Mountains and had to wait 3 days before the rescue forces arrived."The space was so quiet that I could hear my heartbeat. Surrounding me were stars and I was floating very hard to control. I will never forget that moment. I also feel the blame "Of course, I didn't know that I was going to go through the most difficult moment in my life when I returned to the pressurized cavity , " Leonov told Observer.

A decade later, Leonov became one of the two astronauts on the first pairing mission between the American spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet Soyuz 19. He was twice awarded the Soviet Hero's Medal.

Although well known for his career as an astronaut, Leonov's artworks also resonate. Leonov practiced drawing ability in a zero-gravity environment. He painted the first painting in space on a flight in 1965. In the painting, Leonov depicted the sunrise from the Voskhod spacecraft 2. His crayon painting was exhibited at the Museum of Science studied London in 2015.