Alexei Leonov
First spacewalk, 1965; Apollo-Soyuz
Timeline - Leonov in the record
6 entries from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive, 6 of them events in Leonov's own life.
Alexei Leonov is born in a Siberian village, one of many children; by his own account the family was exiled under collectivisation. He is a gifted painter as well as a pilot.
Selected in the first group, Leonov is already a trained painter; in 1965 he will take coloured pencils into orbit and sketch the Earth, the first artist in space.
Leonov floats free of Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes 9 seconds, by his own account for over ten minutes, then finds his suit so ballooned he cannot re-enter the airlock; he secretly bleeds off pressure, risking the bends, to squeeze back in.
Leonov is assigned to the L1 and L3 lunar programmes and, by later accounts, to command a circumlunar flight; Apollo 8 beats them and the mission is cancelled, one of the great might-have-beens of the programme.
Commanding the Soviet side, Leonov shakes hands with Tom Stafford through the joined hatch, the symbol of détente and the template for the international stations to come.
Leonov dies in Moscow, one of the last of the pioneering cosmonauts of the heroic age; his paintings of the cosmos hang in museums.
The research file for this dossier holds 8 verified source entries, 8 of them distinct works. The sources page lists every one of them with what it covers, how it was reached, and the sharpest point at which this page and its sources come apart.