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50 years of spacewalks

50 years ago, on March 18, 1965 Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov conducted humanity's first ever spacewalk

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Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov took part in the Voskhod 2 flight. On March 18, 1965 he conducted extra-vehicular activity (EVA), exiting the capsule for the first ever spacewalk which lasted 12 minutes and nine seconds. Leonov moved five meters away from the capsule. Photo: Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov leaving Voskhod-2 space ship, 1965

© Fotokhronika TASS

US Astronaut Edward White became the first American to have followed in Leonov’s footsteps to make a spacewalk from the Gemini spacecraft, which continued a total of 36 minutes

© NASA/James McDivitt

American astronaut Alfred Worden performed humanity's first deep-space EVA during Apollo 15's homeward journey from the Moon in 1971

NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless made the first ever untethered free flight using the Manned Maneuvering Unit in 1984

Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to perform a spacewalk on July 25, 1984. She conducted an EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours 35 minutes

© Fotokhronika TASS

Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space. She performed the first EVA during Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-G on October 11, 1984

French Jean-Loup Chretien became the first western European in space. In 1988 he performed 5 hour and 57 minute EVA together with Soviet cosmonaut Aleksandr Volkov

© Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

In 2001 NASA astronauts Susan Helms and Jim Voss conducted an 8 hour and 56 minute spacewalk, the longest to date

Russian and Soviet cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev holds the world record on the number of spacewalks performed (16), and accumulated time spent spacewalking (over 82 hours). Photo: Anatoly Solovyev, wearing his space suit, before underwater training session in the pool in Star City, outside Moscow, 1997

© AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

In 2008 CNSA astronaut Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese citizen to carry out a spacewalk. Photo: Zhai Zhigang walking outside the orbit module of the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft for a spacewalk

© AP Photo/Beijing Space Command and Control Center via Xinhua, File

Read also

First human to walk in outer space

On March 18, 1965 Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov conducted humanity's first ever spacewalk. While taking part in the Voskhod 2 flight he conducted extra-vehicular activity, which lasted 12 minutes and nine seconds. Leonov moved five meters away from the capsule. The first-ever spacewalk will remain in history as one of the brightest pages in the history of space exploration. How the human exploration of outer space developed - in photo gallery by TASS.

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