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Alexei Leonov: The first person to spacewalk
On 18 March 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to spacewalk.
He spent around 10 minutes floating above the Earth, tethered to the spaceship by a 5-metre “umbilical cord”.
It nearly went horribly wrong. The lack of atmospheric pressure in space had caused the Soviet’s spacesuit to inflate and become stiff – meaning he couldn’t fit back through the spaceship airlock.
Alexei who died in 2019, spoke to the ѿý in 2014 about his dramatic story and Vicky Farncombe gives some facts about famous spacewalks from over the years.
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