- Title: Colleagues honour Leonov, first man to walk in space
- Date: 11th October 2019
- Summary: VARIOUS OF PHOTOS OF COSMONAUTS
- Embargoed: 25th October 2019 18:44
- Keywords: Leonov's first spaceflight Voskhod 2 Alexei Leonov spasewalk 1965 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project death of Leonov first man in space first person to walk in space
- Location: MOSCOW AND STAR CITY, RUSSIA
- City: MOSCOW AND STAR CITY, RUSSIA
- Country: Russia
- Topics: Science,Space Exploration
- Reuters ID: LVA007B0NMYPZ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Friends and colleagues of Alexei Leonov, the first man who performed a walk in the open space praised him after the news about his death.
Soviet pilot and director of Museum of Cosmonautics Yuri Solomko told Reuters TV that Leonov's spacewalk will be remembered forever.
"There is a space suit behind me, in which he walked not only into space but also into immortality," said Solomko.
Alexei Leonov died on Friday at the age of 85 after a long illness, Russia's TASS news agency reported.
Though less well known internationally than Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, Leonov was a household name in his native Russia and will be remembered in particular for his role in the 1965 Voskhod-2 mission.
During that flight, one of two he made into space in his career, Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk, an episode that lasted 12 minutes and 9 seconds.
The outing was stressful for Leonov whose space suit filled with air to the point where he struggled to get back into his spacecraft.
Leonov flew into space again in 1975, commanding the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first U.S.-Soviet space flight. It occurred at a time when Russia and the United States, which spent part of the Cold War locked in a space race, were pursuing a policy of detente.
Leonov trained as a military pilot before becoming a cosmonaut. He received a 'Hero of the Soviet Union' medal - one of the Russian state's most prestigious awards - twice and has a small crater on the Moon named after him.
Leonov helped train other cosmonauts before retiring in 1992, a year after the Soviet Union collapsed. He devoted himself to private business and his twin passions of art and writing in later life.
(Production: Alexander Reshetnikov, Anastasiya Adasheva, Dmitry Turlyun) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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