A Triumphal First Spacewalk is Followed by a Perilous Return

“A human being has made the first ever walk in open space. He is at this very moment flying free in space.”

By Bob Granath

This was the announcement of Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev during a television broadcast on March 18, 1965. Fellow Voskhod-2 crewmember Alexei Leonov climbed out of their spacecraft, exited an airlock and floated alone 310 miles above the Earth. It was another stunning spaceflight “first” for the Soviet Union — 60 years ago.

Five months earlier, the world watched as the communist regime launched Voskhod, the first multi-person spacecraft with a pilot, a physician and an engineer. However, in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian space experts confirmed the mission was primarily for propaganda and included significant dangers.

“Compared with the preceding six piloted launches, the Voskhod launch was undoubtedly a greater risk,” said Boris Chertok, one of the founding fathers of the Russian space program.

According to the Russian Space Web, plans for a Soviet cosmonaut to perform an extravehicular activity, or EVA, more commonly known as a spacewalk, originated as part of the Soviet government’s Voskhod Program. The concept was developed in March 1964. This achievement would be not only an important step from an engineering standpoint, but also of political and historic significance.

The United States would not match the spacewalking feat for another three months when NASA astronaut Ed White climbed out of his Gemini IV spacecraft.

According to Chertok, the most complex problem proved to be developing a soft airlock chamber for the extravehicular activity.

“During the first orbit, the spacecraft commander activated airlock pressurization and monitored it as it was set in the working position,” Chertok wrote in his book, Rockets and People: Hot Days of the Cold War published in 2009 by the NASA History Division. “The airlock had two hatches, one connecting it with the (spacecraft’s) descent module and one to (exit for) the spacewalk. Unlike the Gemini, the availability of two hatches made it possible to maintain the pressure integrity of the descent module during the cosmonaut’s egress and return.”

Leonov trained for the mission aboard a Tupolev-104 aircraft equipped with a mockup of the airlock and a segment of the descent module. Short periods of weightlessness were achieved as the plane flew repeated parabolas climbing and then diving to create about 30 seconds of microgravity.

Belyayev and Leonov spent several months training as the prime crew for Voskhod-2. However, it was not until two days prior to the planned liftoff that the Soviet State Commission approved the recommendation of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev for the March 18 launch date and crew assignment.

‘Pasha’ and ‘Lyosha’

Soviet Air Force Lt. Col. Pavel Belyayev served as commander of Voskhod-2. He was born on June 26, 1925 in Vologda Oblast, Russia and was one of six children. He was known as “Pasha” to his family and friends. His father was a physician’s assistant and his mother worked on a collective farm. As a boy, he enjoyed playing hockey and hunting. His experience in the cold and in the wild would serve him well after Voskhod-2 landed.

In 1943, Belyayev entered the Sarapul School where he began training as a naval pilot. He graduated as a military pilot in 1945 and, while stationed in Siberia, he flew MiG fighters against the Japanese in the final days of World War II. He soon was considered one of the Soviet Union’s most gifted commander pilots. In 1956, Belyayev began advanced studies at the Red Banner Air Force Academy, graduating in 1959. A year later, he was selected in the first group of cosmonauts. Voskhod-2 was his only spaceflight. He died Jan. 10, 1970 from peritonitis resulting from a surgery on a stomach ulcer.

Maj. Alexi Leonov was born on May 30, 1934 in the West Siberian Krai region, the eighth of nine children and was known as “Lyosha.”. His father was an electrician and miner. During his youth, he used art as a way to provide more food for the family. Leonov began earning money by drawing flowers on the ovens of friends and family and later began painting landscapes on canvasses. In 1948, his family relocated to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland.

Leonov joined a preparatory flying school in Kremenchug, Ukraine, and performed his first solo flight in May 1955. He became a military fighter pilot while attending the Chuguev Higher Air Force Pilots School, graduating in October 1957. Leonov was transferred to East Germany in 1959 as part of a reconnaissance regiment. A year later, he and Belyayev were among 20 Soviet Air Forces pilots selected to be part of the first group of cosmonauts.

‘Go’ for a Walk

On launch day, Chertok described the weather as “lousy” at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“There was a low cloud cover and intermittent drizzling rain,” he said. “The rocket carrying Voskhod-2 lifted off normally and quickly disappeared, leaving behind a perceptible hole in the blanket of clouds.”

Shortly after reaching orbit, mission control gave Belyayev a “go” to extend the accordion-like collapsible airlock Leonov would use to exit the spacecraft for his spacewalk. From its stowed length of 2.3 feet, the airlock extended to 8.2-feet in length. Leonov donned a backpack containing 90 minutes of air for the excursion outside. During their second orbit of the Earth, Belyayev patted his crewmate on the back and he climbed into the airlock. Once depressurized, the hatch was opened as Voskhod-2 passed over northern Africa.

“What I saw took my breath away, “ Leonov wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Two Sides of the Moon, co-authored with NASA astronaut David Scott. “Night was turning to day. The small portion of the Earth’s surface I could see as I leaned back was deep blue. The sky beyond the curving horizon was dark, illuminated with bright stars.”

After holding on to the edge of the spacecraft’s airlock, Leonov let go and floated free.

“It felt as if I were almost motionless, floating above a vast blue sphere draped with a colorful map,” he wrote. “For a few moments, I felt totally alone in this pristine new environment, taking in the beauty of the panorama below me with an artist’s eye.”

Back in the Soviet Union, Leonov’s spacewalk was broadcast on state television. Because of the secrecy of their space program, he was not allowed to prepare his wife, Svetlana, and their daughter.

“When my four-year-old daughter, Vika, saw me take my first steps in space, I later learned, she hid her face in her hands and cried,” Leonov wrote.

“What is he doing?” she wailed. “What is he doing? Please tell Daddy to get back inside.”

However, the family’s shock soon turned to pride when they heard the voice of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev congratulating their husband and father from the Kremlin where special television monitors were installed.

“We members of the Politburo are here sitting and watching what you are doing,” Brezhnev said. “We are proud of you. We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.”

As Leonov pulled himself back toward the airlock, he heard his commander, Belyayev, reminding him it was time to come back inside. At that point, the spacewalker realized his pressure suit had ballooned to the point that he could not fit back inside the airlock feet first as planned.

Using a valve, he carefully bled off some of the high-pressure oxygen in his spacesuit. Leonov pulled himself back inside headfirst. It also was taking longer than expected.

“My pressurized suit was extremely stiff and I had to exert a tremendous pull against the inflated spacesuit to bend my arms and legs,” he said.

Once back in the Voskhod spacecraft, Leonov’s next task was to write a short report in the mission logbook. But, Belyayev could see his crewmate was exhausted, as Leonov wiped sweat from his face once he opened his helmet visor.

His next maneuver was to turn himself around with his head, again, facing the exterior hatch so it could be closed. With that, Belyayev depressurized it so the spacewalker could open the inner hatch and climb back aboard Voskhod-2. He was drenched with sweat with his heart racing after 12 minutes and 9 seconds outside.

“Pasha told me to rest for a while,” Leonov said.

Leonov used colored pencils to make four sketches of his impressions of the panorama of what he saw wile floating in space.

Troubles Begin

One orbit, or about 90 minutes after the end of the spacewalk, problems began.

When the cosmonauts activated the system to eject the airlock on the outside of their spacecraft, the Voskhod began to roll. They were not able to correct the somewhat disorienting problem because their maneuvering fuel was limited. It had to be conserved to align the spacecraft for their re-entry engine firing the next day.

After a sleep period, Belyayev and Leonov had to deal with a more significant problem. The spacecraft’s automatic solar orientation system malfunctioned. Consequently, the retro rocket braking engine did not fire as planned for a landing on their 17th orbit. Mission control became confused and believed they had returned to Earth.

“How are you,” asked Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space acting as spacecraft communicator. “Where did you land?”

“We had to turn off the automatic landing system,” Belyayev responded.

When NASA astronaut David Scott met Belyayev at the 1967 Paris Air Show, the Voskhod-2 commander stated that he had been “the first cosmonaut to bring his mission back to Earth on manual control.” Virtually all maneuvering during previous Soviet-piloted spaceflight were managed automatically or by ground control.

As navigator, Leonov calculated a landing point east of the Perm region west of the Ural Mountains as it was likely a sparsely populated area. Retro fire took place as expected, but 10 seconds later, the descent module was supposed to separate from the equipment module.

Leonov reported that it seemed that they were dragging something. They were. A communications cable was still connecting the two portions of the Voskhod spacecraft. This was causing the two modules to spin together during atmospheric re-entry. At about 62 miles in altitude, the cable burned off, the descent module began flying freely and the spinning stopped. Soon the spacecraft was quietly swinging under the main parachute.

But Where?

A small breaking rocket on the base of the capsule fired and they came to a jarring stop in 6.5 feet of snow. Voskhod-2 was on the ground, but where? Chertok noted that there was no direct contact with the spacecraft.

“There was only indirect data,” he said. “Radars of the Air Defense Troops pinpointed the spacecraft’s entry into the atmosphere and its descent over central Russia.”

A search helicopter crew reported finding a red and white parachute draped in trees where the two cosmonauts landed more than 1,200 miles east of Perm. But the dense forest and deep snow prevented the helicopters from landing nearby.

In the meantime, Belyayev and Leonov wanted to climb out of their spacecraft. When they activated the switch to open their exit hatch, it did not open. The device was jammed against a large tree. By rocking the hatch and using brute force, Belyayev pushed the hatch free. It dropped and disappeared into the snow.

“All the helicopters could do was fly overhead and report that ‘one is chopping wood and the other is making a campfire,’” Chertok said.

Helicopters dropped supplies, including food and two pairs of wolf-skin boots. However, they were not able to pick up the two cosmonauts. As night approached and temperatures began to drop, they both realized the needed to get out of their sweat-filled spacesuits. They removed their suits, poured out the accumulated sweat and put them back on with the warm boots.

“The sweat that had filled my spacesuit while I was trying to re-enter the capsule after my spacewalk was sloshing around in my boots up to my knees,” Leonov said.

The fact that Belyayev and Leonov both spent considerable time developing survival skills while hunting in the wild during their youth paid off. The cosmonauts spent the night aboard their spacecraft where the temperatures plummeted to 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Early the next morning, a rescue crew landed aboard a helicopter touching down in a clearing created about a mile away. Two physicians, a fellow cosmonaut and a camera operator arrived at the landing site on skis. They brought food and supplies to build a small log shelter where they all spend a second night.

On March 21, the two cosmonauts used skis to make their way to a helicopter that lifted them from the clearing in the dense forest to take them to Perm. Two days later, the cosmonauts returned by airliner to a celebratory welcome back at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

In the years to follow, Leonov was selected for a circumlunar flight, but it was cancelled after the success of NASA’s Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon in December 1968. Had the Soviet Union continued with their efforts to land a man on the Moon, Leonov likely would have been their first cosmonaut to step on the lunar surface. However, their 345-foot-tall N-1 rocket failed all four times it was launched in un-piloted test flights.

In 1971, Leonov was to have been commander of the Soyuz 11 mission to the first Soviet space station, Salyut 1. But, his crew was replaced with the backups after one of his crewmates was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The backup crew of Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev successfully docked and worked aboard the Salyut 1 station, spending 24 days in space. However, since the three cosmonauts were not wearing pressure suits, they perished when the spacecraft depressurized during re-entry. Since that time, all cosmonauts launching and landing aboard a Soyuz wear pressure suits.

Rivals to Comrades

Not long after, Leonov was assigned as commander of a Soyuz that would rendezvous in Earth orbit with an American Apollo spacecraft in July 1975. It was the first joint international space mission between the Cold War rivals.

Apollo Soyuz “was a symbol of the potential that existed for cooperation between our two countries,” Leonov said before the joint mission. It was a precursor to American and Russian crews working side-by-side non-stop aboard the International Space Station since October 2000.

During preparations for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, astronauts and officials from the United States traveled to Russia for training and Russian cosmonauts and Soviet space leaders cane to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While in Texas, the Russians stayed in a condominium near the U.S. mission control center. NASA officials accompanied their counterparts to a local grocery store to buy supplies for their stay. When Leonov reached the checkout counter, the cashier immediately noted an unfamiliar accent.

“You’re not from around here are your?” the grocery store employee asked.

“No, I am a cowboy from Siberia,” Leonov responded with a big smile.

Leonov and Valery Kubasov lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 15, 1975. Later that day, the Apollo crew of Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand began the rendezvous effort launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Millions of people around the world watched on television as an American Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule. The project, and its “handshake” in space, was a symbol of détente between the two superpowers. Soon after the docking on July 17, 1975, hatches between the two spacecraft opened with a joint greeting.

“Happy to see you,” said Leonov.

“Tovafich!” (Russian for: “Friend.”), said Stafford.

During preparations for the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Leonov, by then a major general in the Soviet Air Force and Stafford, a lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force, became lasting friends with Leonov being the godfather of Stafford’s younger children.

During an interview for NASA’s Oral History Project on Oct. 15, 1997, Stafford spoke of his continuing bond with his comrade.

“He’s like a brother to me now,” he said. “We had some wonderful experiences there, traveling in the western part of the Soviet Union and Russia. (More recently), I had him come down to Florida. Leonov brought (cosmonaut Vladimir) Titov, and we spent four days fishing and snorkeling.”

Following the Apollo-Soyuz mission Leonov served as “Chief Cosmonaut” and deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre from 1976 until his retirement in 1982.

Following Leonov’s death at the age of 85 on Oct. 11, 2019, Stafford eulogized his comrade at the funeral. He spoke of him as “my colleague and friend.”

Ultimately, Alexei Leonov will be remembered as the first person to venture outside a spacecraft into the void of outer space. During the celebration of the Voskhod-2 mission at Moscow’s Red Square on March 23, 1965, the artist spoke eloquently about what he saw.

“I was simply astounded and spellbound by the picture of the depths of space — its grandeur, the clarity of its colors and the sharp contrasts between the velvety darkness and the blinding radiance of the stars,” he said. “I felt a sense of vastness and lightness. It was bright and good.”

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