First 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”.

Recalling that moment, he said: “I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe. At the same time, I felt enormously powerful.”

But the mission didn’t go smoothly. 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.

“It had become a dangerous situation. Very dangerous. Life threatening”, he said.

Vicky Farncombe has been reading and listening to archive interviews with Alexei, who died in 2019, to bring you his dramatic story.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

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(Photo: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Credit: Getty Images)