Deaths in 2019: Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov

ALEXEI LEONOV, 85

Died October 11, 2019, in Moscow.

In 1965, he became the first person to walk in space and was scheduled to walk on the moon before the Soviet Union abandoned its efforts for a manned lunar landing.

He was a Soviet air force officer chosen in 1959 as part of the first inaugural class of cosmonauts.  At the time, the Soviet Union was leading in the Race to Space.  In 1957, they launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth.  In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a close friend of Leonov, became the first person in space.

On March 18, 1965, Leonov took that first spacewalk outside his capsule.  His spacewalk lasted just 12 minutes and he came close to dying, but survived.