Leonov’s First Spacewalk: The Silent Feed Cut and the Real Crisis

In 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first person to spacewalk during Voskhod 2, but mid-broadcast mission control cut the live feed as his suit ballooned in vacuum, forcing him to contend with a tricky return and a 12-minute outside excursion. The rest of the flight faced additional malfunctions and a difficult, off-target reentry, with rescue crews reaching them after days in harsh conditions. Publicly, the mission was framed as a success, but decades of evidence show extensive Soviet secrecy and crisis management around the near-disaster, and later analyses contrasted this with the more open NASA approach—shaping future spaceflight and contributing to the shift toward Soyuz.