Voskhod 2
On 18 March 1965 Voskhod 2 delivered the first human spacewalk: Alexei Leonov spent 12 minutes and 9 seconds outside the spacecraft. The return nearly ended in tragedy — a ballooned spacesuit, an automatic-system failure and an emergency landing in snowbound taiga hundreds of kilometres off target.
◉ REÁLNÉ FOTO · Reubenbarton at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia CommonsContents
living encyclopedia entryoskhod 2 was meant to beat America again — this time with the first human spacewalk. On 18 March 1965 Alexei Leonov ventured outside the ship for barely a quarter of an hour, on nothing but a five-metre tether. Few realised at the time how close the whole mission came to disaster.
The Voskhod craft was a rebuilt Vostok made to carry more than one person. For the spacewalk, engineers added an inflatable airlock called "Volga" — a rigid airlock would not fit inside the launch vehicle. The crew were commander Pavel Belyayev and pilot Alexei Leonov, in Berkut suits designed for exposure to vacuum.
A seasoned military pilot and the oldest member of the first cosmonaut corps. On return he performed the first-ever manual controlled landing of a Soviet crewed spacecraft.
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The first human to walk in open space. A gifted painter; a decade later he commanded the Soviet ship during the joint Apollo–Soyuz flight.
open person →At 07:00 UTC Voskhod 2 lifted off from Baikonur with Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov aboard. The mission had a single, historic…
číst kapitolu →At the start of the second orbit Leonov pushed through the Volga airlock and floated out. At 08:34 UTC he became the first human…
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In the vacuum Leonov's Berkut suit ballooned like a balloon. It stiffened so much that he could not fit back into the narrow…
číst kapitolu →The troubles did not end in space. During return the automatic orientation system failed and Belyayev had to land the ship…
číst kapitolu →MISSION IN NUMBERS
OČITÉ SVĚDECTVÍ„The Earth is round.
For all its troubles, Voskhod 2 was a huge success: the first spacewalk beat America's Gemini 4 by nearly three months. It was also the last mission of the Voskhod program — the Soviets then focused all their effort on the Soyuz spacecraft. Leonov returned to space in 1975 for the joint Apollo–Soyuz flight.
- Alexei Leonov was the first human to step out of a spacecraft into open space — nearly three months before America's Ed White.
- In vacuum his suit ballooned so much he could not fit back into the airlock; he had to bleed off pressure, risking decompression sickness.
- The "Volga" airlock was inflatable — a rigid one would not fit under the launch vehicle's fairing.
- During return the automatics failed and commander Belyayev made the first manual landing of a Soviet crewed spacecraft.
- The capsule came down 386 km off target in the taiga; the crew waited two freezing nights for rescue.
