On 18 March, 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to conduct a space walk. This historic event occurred on the Voskhod 2 flight. He was outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes and nine seconds connected to the craft by a 5.35 meter tether. At the end of the spacewalk, his spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter the airlock.
He opened a valve to allow some of the suit’s pressure to bleed off and was barely able to get back inside the capsule. From 1976 to 1982, Leonov was the commander of the cosmonaut team (“Chief Cosmonaut”) and deputy director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Leonov is an accomplished artist whose published books include albums of his artistic works.