The Death of the First Space Walker

image courtesy of NASA

On March 18, 1965, Alexey Leonov, a Russian cosmonaut, stepped out of a thin metal shell of a spacecraft, and floated into space. The name of this craft was Voskhod 2, and Leonov spent 12 minutes and nine seconds of what was to be glorious exploration outside the craft. It nearly cost him his life.

The Russians were intent on being the first to carry out a spacewalk, and cosmonauts Leonov and Pavel…