Photo credit: engine.space
Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov passed away, TASS reported. He died on Friday, October 11, after a serious illness at the 86th year of life.
The farewell ceremony to the double Hero of the Soviet Union is scheduled for October 15. The funeral will take place at the Federal War Memorial Cemetery in the Moscow region.
Aleksey Leonov was the first person to enter outer space from the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. One of the most important events in the history of world space exploration occurred on March 18, 1965. Leonov stayed in the airless space for more than twelve minutes. For this feat, he was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. He received the second star of the Hero for participating in the historical Soyuz-Apollo flight.
Leonov is a holder of dozens of Russian and foreign awards, including the Order of Merit to the Fatherland, I degree. He was an honorary citizen of thirty cities of the world, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, academician of the Russian Tsiolkovsky Academy of Cosmonautics. Leonov is a candidate of technical sciences, author and co-author of scientific research and experiments.
He was also well known as an artist and painted space and terrestrial landscapes, portraits of friends, fantastic stories. In collaboration with the artist Andrey Sokolov, Leonov created a number of USSR postage stamps on the theme of space.
Russkiy Mir reported that this spring Russian cosmonauts celebrated the 85th anniversary of Alexey Leonov in orbit. Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin dedicated spacewalks to him. Their spacesuits were decorated with the inscriptions "Leonov No. 1" and "Happy Birthday, Alexey Arkhipovich."
Russkiy Mir
