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Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov 
(Cyrillic_alphabet|Cyrillic:
Алексе́&#
1081;
Архи́по&#
1074;ич
Лео́нов;
born May 30, 1934 in Listvyanka) is a retired 
Soviet Union|Soviet/Russian astronaut|cosmonaut
who, on March 18, 1965 became the first person to
Extra-vehicular activity|walk in space.

Leonov was one of the 20 air force pilots selected
as the first cosmonaut group in 1960. His
spacewalk was originally to have taken place on
the Vostok programme|Vostok 11 mission, but this
was cancelled, and the historic moment happened on
the Voskhod 2 flight instead. He was outside the
spacecraft around 5 meters away for nearly 12
minutes on March 18, 1965. By then, he had spent
some eighteen months undergoing intense
weightlessness training. 

In 1968 Leonov was selected to be commander of a
circumlunar Soyuz spacecraft|Soyuz flight. However
as all unmanned test flights of this mission
failed, and the Apollo 8 mission already gave that
point in the Space Race to the USA, the flight was
cancelled. In 1971 Leonov was to have been part of
the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission, but his crew was
replaced with the back-up after Cosmonaut Valery
Kubasov was suspected to have tuberculosis.

Leonov's next trip into space was similarly
significant — he commanded the Soviet side
of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Soyuz 19, the first
joint mission between the Soviet Union|Soviet and
United States|US space programmes.

From 1976 to 1982, Leonov was the commander of the
cosmonaut team ("Chief Cosmonaut"), and deputy
director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center, where he oversaw crew training. He also
edited the cosmonaut newsletter "Neptune". He
retired in 1991.

Leonov currently chairs an investment corporation
in Moscow. He is an accomplished artist and his
work has been widely exhibited and published; his
painting Near the Moon(1968) is uncannily like the
opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A
Space Odyssey.

Arthur C. Clarke's book 2010: Odyssey Two was
dedicated to Leonov and Andrei Sakharov; the
fictional spaceship in the book Aleksei Leonov was
named after him.

==Stamps==
* Aleksei Leonov on
http://www.postbeeld.com/database/zegel.php3?pic=.
./zegelfotos/ecp/ecp1208.jpg&stamp=EC1208&desc=Spa
ce%206v Ecuador postal stamp 1966
* Aleksei Leonov on
http://www.postbeeld.com/database/zegel.php3?pic=.
./zegelfotos/blp/blp1555.jpg&stamp=BL1555&desc=Bal
canphila%202v Bulgarian postal stamp 1965 with
Pavel Belyayev

==References==
*Two Sides of the Moon : Our Story of the Cold War
Space Race by David Scott and Aleksei Leonov (ISBN
0312308655)