WorldAlexei Leonov, a Soviet-era cosmonaut who was the first man to conduct a spacewalk in 1965, died in Moscow on Friday aged 85 after a long illness. Leonov was a close friend of Yury Gagarin, the first human to go to outer space in 1961. In 1965, Leonov made history when he left a spacecraft during the Voskhod 2 mission for a spacewalk that lasted 12 minutes and nine seconds. "I gently pulled myself out and kicked off from the vessel," Leonov, then a sprightly 80-year-old, told AFP in 2015. Leonov and another cosmonaut, pilot Pavel Belyayev, (codenames Almaz-1 and Almaz-2) were rocketed almost 500 kilometres (310 miles) into orbit.

Source: Sunday Times October 11, 2019 12:56 UTC