Alexei Leonov, the first human to walk in space, has died.
Leonov almost died during his first spacewalk when he had difficulty getting back in his spacecraft because his spacesuit ballooned up in the vacuum of space. This was not reported in 1965 when his spacewalk happened.
Leonov was also the commander of the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz test project where an Apollo spacecraft docked in orbit with a Soyuz spacecraft in a mostly symbolic mission that leads directly to the modern cooperation on the International Space Station.
I met Leonov when he came to Monterey California in 2004. He was an artist and he had an art show at a gallery near Cannery Row. I got a photo of him with me (above), and a second photo (below) when Alan Shepard, the first American in space, came to the even. Shepard lived nearby in Carmel. Unknown to me he was dying and the look on his face shows he wasn’t feeling well.