Recalling a historic walk with Alexey Leonov

Meeting the man who had the rare experience of floating over Planet Earth, who was recording the Earth as he was 'walking' in space with one of the earliest hand-held cameras and who saw what most of us will never see with our own eyes

A still of Alexey Leonov taken from the documentary The Man Walking in Space. Central Press / Getty Images

It all began with a black-and-white photo. Two men, dressed in full army uniform, smiling at the camera, with the date scribbled on the back in pencil sometime in February 1962, in Moscow.

One man I recognised immediately as my grandfather. Then, after a closer look, I realised the man standing next to him was Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, who on April 12, 1961, became the first man in space.

I found this photo in a shoebox just a few weeks after I met one of Gagarin's closest friends and fellow cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, who made history as the first human to "walk" in space – the 50th anniversary of which was last month. Leonov was the first human to exit, float free and then re-enter an orbiting spacecraft, during the Voskhod 2 spacecraft mission, on March 18, 1965. With Pavel Belyayev flying the spacecraft, Leonov accomplished the first spacewalk, which lasted 12 minutes and nine seconds.

When we met in March 2006, he was visiting Lebanon, after visiting Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, and he was invited to speak at the American University of Beirut. When I heard he was coming, I rushed to meet and interview him. While I didn’t know it at the time, I took a photo very similar to that of my grandfather, with both Leonov and I smiling at the camera.

Leonov will turn 81 next month; when I met him, he was 72, defying his age, full of life and laughter.

“I have survived so much, what is age? I don’t believe in it,” he laughed when I said he was very “hyper” for a man in 70s. I couldn’t keep up with him as he walked fast through the AUB campus and chatted to everyone who happened to stop him and say hello.

This man, who had the rare experience of floating over Planet Earth, who was recording the Earth as he was “walking” in space with one of the earliest hand-held cameras and who saw what I and many others will never see with their own eyes, was so down-to-earth.

Fifty years ago, Leonov announced: “When humans wear a special suit, they can live and work in outer space ... Leaving the spacecraft into outer space is quite possible and is no longer mysterious to a man,” in a report to his then-Soviet government, revolutionising space technology and human possibilities forever. His step helped pave the way for humans to walk on the Moon; build and maintain space stations; and service satellites and space telescopes.

Leonov joined the Soviet space programme alongside Gagarin in 1960 as part of the first cosmonaut selection. “We came from poor, humble backgrounds, mostly from villages, and so we worked very hard as it was our dream to do something for our country and for our history,” he said.

He spoke of some of the ­exercises he undertook, such as training his hands to carry and work with gloves that weighed more than 90 kilograms. He wasn’t “asked” at any point how he felt about a mission; he was ordered.

“That is the way it was. You obey and you do your best, even if you have no prior information to go on,” he said. For instance, while out walking, he became what he called “the Michelin man” – his spacesuit ballooned more than the technicians had anticipated. His front, exposed to the Sun, reached 120°C, and his back, away from the sun, reached minus 140°C – the discrepancy in temperature made him rotate in space.

“I had no one to ask what to do, since it had never been done before. So I just made a decision to depressurise my suit to be able to move my limbs and try to re-enter the capsule,” he said, while also admitting he felt great pain across his body.

"But I made it, and I did many other projects with space, but nothing like that first walk," said Leonov, who flew again as commander of the Soviet side of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz test project, the first joint mission between the US and Russia. He was scheduled to land on the Moon, but that was cancelled when the Americans landed there first.

“They beat us to it,” he laughed. “But it is OK. Competition is good. We need to keep conquering space, as that is our future.”