All articles tagged with #voskhod 2
Alexei Leonov became the first person to exit a spacecraft in 1965 during the Voskhod 2 mission, but his Berkut suit ballooned in vacuum, forcing him to vent air to fit back through the airlock; the risky maneuver highlighted the suit’s limits, preceded Ed White’s U.S. EVA by about three months, and underscored that spacewalking demands careful engineering and planning beyond courage.
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.