Today In History: March 18 1965

Alexei Leonov became the first man to float in space 

On March 18, 1965 one of the most important milestones in the race for the conquest of space took place. For the first time a man literally went for a walk into space. It was the Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Moscow television offered images of this first spacewalk for six minutes in which viewers could see how Leonov came slowly out of his ship, floating in space, and did several cartwheels in the vacuum. The images were taken by a movie camera and were issued on television two hours after recording it. The space mission, called the Voskhod 2, formed part of a comprehensive program of manned flights, when the Soviet Union was at its peak during the space race. Besides Alexei Leonov, Voskhod 2 was also manned by Colonel Pavel Balyaef.