First spacewalk

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 18 March 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to spacewalk.

He spent around 10 minutes floating above the Earth, tethered to the spaceship by a 5m “umbilical cord”.

Recalling that moment, he said: “I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe. At the same time, I felt enormously powerful.”

But the mission didn’t go smoothly. The lack of atmospheric pressure in space had caused the Soviet’s spacesuit to inflate and become stiff – meaning he couldn’t fit back through the spaceship airlock.

“It had become a dangerous situation. Very dangerous. Life threatening”, he said.

Vicky Farncombe has been reading and listening to archive interviews with Alexei, who died in 2019, to bring you his dramatic story.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?
0:06.6	Like Desert Island Discs, where you can hear castaways like Cher, Gareth Southgate and Nick Cave,
0:12.6	and enjoy longer versions of the music they've picked.
0:15.6	Good things come to those who don't wait.
0:18.6	Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.
0:26.8	Hello, you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Vicky Farncom.
0:33.7	I've been delving into the archives to take you back to the 18th of March, 1965, when cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to Spacewalk.
0:45.4	This is Radio Mosca.
0:47.5	At 1130 this morning, Moscow time, one of the Soviet spacemen left the spaceship in outer space. This was done for the first time
0:58.7	in the world. This is how the Soviet Union reported the fact that Alexeyanov had become the first
1:05.4	human to float above the earth outside a spaceship. After which, we can turn safely to the spaceship.
1:13.7	But the Soviet propaganda machine was not being entirely truthful.
1:18.1	In 2014, Alexei gave a rare interview to the BBC
1:21.9	for the TV documentary Cosmonauts.
1:25.3	In the footage, he's wearing a smart navy suit with gold star medals
1:29.7	pinned on the left-hand side of his jacket. His eyes twinkle as he recounts his memories and the
1:36.0	moment he nearly died in space. Alexei was born in Siberia, one of 12 siblings. He trained as a fighter pilot before becoming one of 20 cosmonaut cadets.
1:50.6	You needed to be physically fit.
1:53.4	Every day I ran at least five kilometres.
1:56.4	Then I swam 700 meters.
1:59.0	There was a lot of parachute training.
2:04.2	I did 200 jumps. On the other side of the world, American astronauts were undergoing similar training as the two superpowers competed for
	...

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