First Space Walk - A Near-Death Experience

On 18 March 1965, Aleksei Leonov was the first person to walk in space.  His exhilaration, and that of his comrades back on Earth, nearly turned to disaster when Leonov’s space suit unexpectedly inflated more than anyone expected.  He became too large to reenter the airlock of his spacecraft, Voskhod II.

This clip combines historical footage, and recreated scenes, to depict those tense moments when Aleksei Leonov nearly became a space casualty.

Credits

From “Race for the Moon,” episode four of Space Race (a BBC documentary/drama produced in cooperation with British, German, Russian and American teams).