The extraordinary, death-defying life of Alexei Leonov

Imagine you are the first person ever to open the hatch of a spaceship and step out into outer space. You are floating alone, 5 meters from your capsule, drifting and tumbling gently as the entire Earth is laid out below you, connected to your ship by only a cable. No one in history has been in this position before. Then imagine that within minutes, you are unable to get back into the ship and may die.

That is what Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov experienced on 18 March 1965, at the height of the Cold War space race.

Leonov, who died on 11 October at the age of 85, was known principally as the first person to carry out a spacewalk. But the life he led was a colorful one, punctuated by an unerring ability to escape death. Besides flying in space twice, Leonov was a prolific painter, an international ambassador for space exploration, and a charismatic storyteller.

Leonov was born on 30 March 1934 in Listvyanka, a small village in the Kemerovo region of Siberia. His interest in flying—inspired by one of his older brothers, who was an airplane mechanic—led him to piloting MiG fighters for the Soviet air force. In 1960, after a series of grueling tests, Leonov was one of 20 men recruited into the first Soviet cosmonaut corps.

One member of this group, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961 became the first human to venture into the cosmos. Leonov supported his close friend’s historic flight from a ground station on the Kamchatka peninsula. When Gagarin flew over the station, he exclaimed, “Say hello to Blondin!"—using Leonov’s nickname (“blond”), thus giving rise to Leonov’s claim that the first name spoken in outer space was his. Seven years later, Leonov was one of the first to arrive at Gagarin’s air crash site; he confirmed that the body found was that of Gagarin by recognizing a birthmark.

Leonov’s crowning achievement took place when he and crewmember Pavel Belyayev were launched into space on the spaceship Voskhod-2 to perform the first spacewalk. Once in orbit, Belyayev activated an extensible airlock that could be cast off. Leonov dutifully checked his Berkut (“golden eagle”) spacesuit, made his way through the airlock, and kicked off and away from the ship. He later remembered that “it was an extraordinary sensation. I had never felt quite like it before. I was free above the planet Earth and I saw it! I saw it was rotating majestically below me. Suddenly in the silence, I heard the words ‘Attention! Attention! Man has entered space! Man has entered open space!’” His compatriot Belyayev’s dramatic words echoed through the comm system, punctuated only by the sound of Leonov’s breathing.

After about 10 minutes outside, floating over the Pacific Ocean, Leonov realized that a design defect had caused his spacesuit to balloon—so much so that his hands had pulled out of his gloves. He was supposed to go back into the airlock feetfirst but was unable to maneuver himself in his now-bulbous suit. In desperation, he used a lever to reduce pressure in the suit and then shoved himself in headfirst. Such a sudden reduction in pressure put him at great risk for decompression sickness (the bends). Full of adrenaline, he somehow closed the outer hatch and somersaulted in the cramped space, risking tearing the airlock. By the time Leonov was back in his seat, he had suffered a mild heatstroke (his heart rate had escalated to 190) and was drenched in sweat.

That was not all. As Leonov and Belyayev orbited Earth, the pressure inside the spaceship unexpectedly rose, creating a fire hazard in the pure-oxygen atmosphere. The tiniest spark would have blown the spacecraft to smithereens. The two men spent seven tense hours unable to move for fear of causing any friction. Then the automatic system designed to orient the spaceship for reentry failed. Taking manual control, Belyayev landed the capsule nearly 400 kilometers off target in a dense, snow-covered forest in central Siberia. Search helicopters were unable to land nearby, so the crew spent two extremely cold and uncomfortable nights trying to warm themselves with a makeshift bonfire, waiting to be rescued.

Recovered from his flight, Leonov spent the next decade navigating a litany of disappointments and near-death experiences. He was slated to command the first outbound Soviet mission to circle the Moon, but the flight was called off just weeks before its scheduled December 1968 launch due to safety concerns. Leonov remained bitter about the decision for the rest of his life—although it’s worth noting that when the rocket was launched (without a crew), the second stage failed and deposited the capsule on the border with Mongolia instead of the Moon. Leonov also trained with cosmonauts to land on the Moon, but that project too was canceled without any tangible results.

Soon he was cycled into a more modest, Earth-orbiting space station program known as Salyut, and in 1971 he was tapped to command a crew to spend a month in space. Due to a medical issue with one of his crewmates, his superiors decided just days before the launch to send a different crew to the station. Leonov’s keen disappointment turned to horror and regret when the replacement crew was killed upon reentry. The Soviets tried to send Leonov to subsequent space stations in 1972 and 1973, but both times the stations failed before he could be launched.

Finally, after years of disappointment, came Leonov’s eventful second foray into space. In 1975, as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), he commanded a Soyuz spaceship that docked with an American Apollo in Earth orbit. In space, the Soviet crew shook hands with their American counterparts, a meeting that was hailed as the peak of détente between the two superpowers. After the flight, Leonov and his American equivalent, NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, became affable ambassadors for space cooperation. Although relations between the two superpowers soured, the two men remained very close. With Leonov’s help, Stafford and his wife adopted two Russian orphans and asked Leonov to be their godfather.

After many years serving as an administrator at the cosmonaut training center at Star City, Leonov was forced into retirement in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. He remained an active participant in space causes, traveling the world to give lectures, often as part of the Association of Space Explorers, a nonprofit organization that brings together space travelers to share their experiences. By all accounts, Leonov was a spirited and colorful presence at those meetings, full of jokes and good-natured embellishments of his already amazing life stories.

He also produced a vast corpus of space-themed paintings, most created during the Soviet period. With their vivid colors and tasteful vistas, Leonov’s works are among the few artistic legacies of the space age produced by one of its immediate participants. In poor health recently, he was involved in some dubious business dealings, including with an investment company embroiled in scandal. But Leonov’s legacy remains safe, thanks to an incredible and vibrant life served in the cause of space exploration.

Asif Siddiqi, a science and technology historian at Fordham University in New York, is the author of The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).