Alexey Leonov
Alexei Leonov (Russian: Алексей Архипович Леонов, scientific transliteration Aleksej Archipovič Leonov; * May 30, 1934 in Listvyanka at Kemerovo, Russian SFSR ) is a former Soviet cosmonaut and the first man, who left his spaceship and freely in space floated (first spacewalk ).
Life
Leonov was the eighth of nine children of a farmer and horse breeder from the West Siberia. 1948 the family moved to Kaliningrad. 1953 Leonov joined the air forces of the Soviet Army and started his training as a pilot at the flight school Kremenchug in the Ukraine, which he left in 1955 with distinction. He was then trained to 1957 in the flying school Chuhuiv on fighter planes.
Vostok
Leonov came in 1959 as a lieutenant in the shortlist for the cosmonaut training. With 19 other pilots he then formed from 7 March 1960, the first cosmonaut group in the USSR.
In June 1963, he was the backup pilot for Valeri Bykowski the space flight of Vostok 5, the second group of manned space flight. Leonov was thus a candidate for another Vostok flight and did not begin, as other cosmonauts, 1964, the training for the new Soyuz spacecraft.
Voskhod
In the spring of 1964 it was decided that more space flights with modified Vostok spacecraft would start under the name Voskhod. The first Voskhod flight would promote science cosmonauts as passengers, while a cosmonaut would leave his spaceship at the second flight for the first time. Leonov was trained for the second flight and from July specifically for the exit. On February 9, 1965, he was confirmed by the officials as a crew member with exit function.
Voskhod 2 was launched on 18 March 1965, Leonov and Pavel Belyayev his commander on board. In the left orbit Leonov became the first man his space ship and floated freely in space. With the spaceship he was only connected by a 4.5 m long security line and hovered around 12 minutes in space. This action almost ended in disaster. The space suit was so strongly inflated by the pressure difference from the vacuum of space, that he no longer fit through the hatch to the spaceship. Only when Leonov air desisted from his suit in an improvised emergency measure, he could return. In " Two Man in the Moon " Leonov describes the reaching to panic struggle with the safety line during space exit.
Due to problems with the manual firing of the braking rockets landed Voskhod 2 far from the target area, and Leonov and Belyayev had to wait two days and in addition to the space ship, to the salvage teams had advanced to them.
After this flight, Leonov spent much time on lecture tours abroad.
The moon program
In the aftermath Leonov worked in the Soviet lunar program. The plans were changed continually, and so changing cosmonauts groups were temporarily for a lunar orbit, sometimes trained for a lunar landing. Leonov was all the time in this program and held the position of a commander held. In September 1968 Leonov was one of three commanders on the shortlist for a moon flight. However, a nomination for the first flight was questionable because Leonov be forfeited sympathy in a high position by three self-inflicted car accidents within four months, debauchery and reckless statements to the international press.
After the U.S. with Apollo 8 orbited the moon in December 1968 and Apollo 11 in July 1969 carried out the first manned moon landing, the Soviet lunar program was stopped. Henceforth, more emphasis was placed on the construction and operation of space stations.
Soyuz
In 1971, Leonov was assigned as commander of the flight, Soyuz 11, which should lead to the space station Salyut 1. As a result of tuberculosis is suspected in his pilot Kubasov however, the complete three -man crew was replaced two days before the start, which saved his life. The backup crew of Soyuz 11 set a new long-term record in the universe, but choked on the return in the Soyuz spacecraft.
Even after the accident, Leonov was assigned as commander of a space flight to the Salyut 1. But he did not play along with his teammates Rukavishnikov and Kolodin.
Leonov was then nominated as a Soviet commander for the Apollo - Soyuz Test Project. The preparations for this first international project of manned space flight lasted several years and required several trips to NASA in the United States. On 15 July 1975 he then started along with Kubasov in Soyuz 19 and docked two days later the first Soviet-American cooperation in space with an Apollo spacecraft, which was occupied by the U.S. astronauts Stafford, Brand and Slayton.
Literature and painting, film
In 1971, his book walkers in space, 1980 phase-out in the cosmos. In 2004, he co-wrote with U.S. astronaut David Scott Two man in the moon. He also engaged in painting. Leonov was known as cosmonauts artist who had processed impressions of the flights in his art; Of his works belong to the fundus of the cosmonaut museum in Moscow. In the science fiction novel 2010 - Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke and his film 2010 - The Year We Make Contact in 1984, called the Russian spaceship that is traveling to Jupiter 's moon Europa, Leonov.
Works
- Alexei A. Leonov, Vladimir I. Lebedev: The man in space. The perception of space and time in the cosmos. Urania Verlag, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1969
- Alexei Leonov: walkers in space. Memories. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-421-01559-7
- Alexei A. Leonov, David Randolph Scott, Christine Toomey: Two man in the moon. ECON Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-430-15975- X