Forty-five years ago today — March 18, 1965 — the Voskhod-2 mission launched from Baikonur in what was then the USSR (but is now Kazakhstan). Its crew consisted of cosmonauts Pavel I. Belyayev and Aleksei A. Leonov.
Leonov performed the first-ever spacewalk on that flight, and later had a spaceship named after him in the book and movie named after this year.
In the January 2005 issue of Air & Space Smithsonian Leonov recounted how difficult the Voshkod-2 mission was.
I realized how deformed my stiff spacesuit had become, owing to the lack of atmospheric pressure. My feet had pulled away from my boots and my fingers from the gloves attached to my sleeves, making it impossible to reenter the airlock feet first….
The only solution was to reduce the pressure in my suit by opening the pressure valve and letting out a little oxygen at a time as I tried to inch inside the airlock. At first I thought of reporting what I planned to do to mission control. But I decided against it. I did not want to create nervousness on the ground….
I could feel my temperature rising dangerously high, with a rush of heat from my feet traveling up my legs and arms, due to the immense physical exertion all the maneuvering involved. It was taking far longer than it was supposed to. Even when I at last managed to pull myself entirely into the airlock, I had to perform another almost impossible maneuver. I had to curl my body around in order to close the airlock….
But,
[The] difficulties I experienced reentering the spacecraft were just the start of a series of dire emergencies that almost cost us our lives.
You can read the whole fascinating article here.
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