Meeting the stars: Presidential Library’s collections cast light on the first spacewalk

On March 18, 1965 the legendary pilot-cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union, Alexey Leonov performed the world's first space walk. Overnight, all mankind’s greatest dream became a reality. Space exploration is in the spotlight of “Outer Space” - a special electronic collection of unique materials, which is available for study on the portal of the Presidential Library. These documents provide the best evidence and proof of an indisputable fact: all the most important discoveries and inventions in this field were made by our country, our heroes-cosmonauts.

The newsreel of that time highlights the feat of Alexey Leonov. The rare footage that shows celebrated cosmonauts - Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, Valentina Tereshkova, Georgy Beregovoy, and, of course, Alexey Leonov, is also available on the portal of the Presidential Library.

It should be noted that this momentous event took place just four years after Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight. Aleksey Leonov shared the first-hand accounts, described tremendous efforts made to achieve the goal. His memories may be found in extensive electronic collections of the Presidential Library, which contain nearly 770,000 copies of rare documents. You may either read them in St. Petersburg in a building at Senate Square, 3 or in any of 900 remote access centers that are located in all regions of our country and in more than 30 countries of the world.

In an interview to Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper (of May 29, 2004), Leonov described the preparations made for the historic flight of Voskhod 2 spacecraft. Nobody concealed the risk that the cosmonaut and his colleague Pavel Belyaev were going to face. However, the journey was much more dangerous than it had appeared on Earth. The life of our cosmonauts, as Alexey Leonov put it , “was hanging by a thread”.

The risk was justified though. When Leonov got out of the spacecraft and found himself in private with the Universe the view impressed him deeply. Danger seemed to have passed. But in fact, even greater peril awaited Alexey Leonov. After spending 12 minutes and 9 seconds in outer space, he had to get back into the spacecraft. It turned out to be much more difficult than leaving it. Leonov had to rely solely on his intuition and professionalism.

In the same interview, whose electronic copy is available in the Presidential Library collections, Leonov recounted how difficult and still dangerous were the first minutes after the successful return on board Voskhod.

In total, the flight of Voskhod 2 lasted 1 day 2 hours 2 minutes and 17 seconds. The courage displayed by Alexey Leonov was highly regarded. On March 23, 1965, the cosmonaut was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. In October 1965 the World Air Sports Federation (Federation Aeronautique Internationale - FAI) registered the world record of the longest human stay in space outside the spacecraft and the absolute record set by Voskhod 2 spacecraft for gaining the maximum flight altitude of 497.7 kilometers. Alexey Leonov was awarded the Space Gold medal – the highest decoration of the organization.