By: Tim Riley
As the crusade for supremacy in space raged on between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts in the mid-1960s, the U.S.S.R. scored first 35 years ago when Alexei Leonov exited the airlock of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft. Leonov became the first human to walk in space as he courageously hovered for 10 minutes outside the Voskhod 2 on March 18, 1965. Leonov's momentary excursion proved that something that previously only existed in science fiction was real. For NASA, it was a severe defeat: Spacewalks had been scheduled for the upcoming two-man Gemini flights, but the Soviets had upstaged the Americans plans. By June 1965, NASA was ready to get into the spacewalking game. After months of preparations, Ed White emerged from Gemini 4 and floated at the end of a 25-foot golden tether for 22 minutes. Thirty-five years later, Whites walk is one of the most poignant moments in U.S. space history. Anyone on Earth who listened to the transmissions from Gemini 4 could hear the elation in Whites voice as he floated free, 100 miles up. For NASA, that was just the beginning. When Gene Cernan emerged from Gemini 9 in June 1966, he planned to try out a jet-propelled backpack called the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit, a direct ancestor of the Manned Maneuvering Unit used by shuttle spacewalkers today. But Cernan ran into trouble when his tasks proved far more difficult than NASA had anticipated. Every time Cernan tried to turn a knob, his weightless body turned instead. As he tried to activate the maneuvering unit, he found it almost impossible to steady himself. In his stiff, pressurized spacesuit, Cernan became so overheated that his visor clouded over with moisture. He aborted his spacewalk and struggled to find his way back into Gemini 9. It was not until Gemini 12, NASA's final Gemini mission that they mastered spacewalking. Buzz Aldrin worked for hours outside Gemini 12 with little difficulty. By the late 1960s, the Americans and the Soviets were using spacewalks as a way to test techniques and equipment for planned missions to the moon. In 1969, astronaut Rusty Schweickart spent about half an hour outside Apollo 9 in Earth orbit, testing a new spacesuit designed to be worn on the moon's surface. NASA learned from the Gemini's experiences that the Apollo suit offered greater flexibility and a more resourceful method to keep astronauts cool while working. The Apollo missions took spacewalking to new heights. NASA's next program, Skylab, made spacewalking more daring, and more essential. During its launch on May 25, 1973, the Skylab space station was damaged by aerodynamic stresses. Skylab reached orbit, un-piloted, and missing one of its two solar-power arrays. The remaining array was secured to the side of the station by a stray piece of metal. For Pete Conrad and his crew, who reached Skylab 11 days later, the most critical assignment was to save the crippled station. On June 7, Conrad and Kerwin put on their spacesuits and went outside, where they assembled a pair of shears at the end of a long pole. Wielding their cutting tool, they managed to free the stuck array. In the 1980s, the art of spacewalking fully developed. In February 1984, Bruce McCandless became the first astronaut to test the Manned Maneuvering Unit; an astronaut could fly freely in space, like a miniature spacecraft. Impressive achievements followed. Shuttle spacewalkers captured wayward satellites and repaired them, or returned them to Earth. In 1993, after months of preparations on Earth, astronauts staged the most demanding space repair job ever when they fixed the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. By that time, NASA was looking ahead to building a permanent International Space Station (ISS) in Earth orbit. In the 1990s, shuttle spacewalkers practiced techniques they would put to use in building the ISS. During stays by U.S. astronauts aboard the Russian space station Mir, they and cosmonauts spacewalked together; it was a moment that would have been unthinkable when Alexei Leonov stepped into the void for a few brief, exhilarating minutes, 35 years ago. Information from www.space.com contributed to this article.
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