Leonov was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force pilots selected to be part of the first cosmonaut group in 1960. Like all the Soviet cosmonauts Leonov was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His walk in space was originally to have taken place on the Vostok 11 mission, but this was cancelled, and the historic event happened on the Voskhod 2
flight instead. He was outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes and nine
seconds on 18 March 1965, connected to the craft by a 5.35 meter tether.
At the end of the spacewalk, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the
vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter the airlock. He
opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, and
was barely able to get back inside the capsule. Leonov had spent some
eighteen months undergoing intensive weightlessness training for the mission.As of November 2011, Leonov is the last survivor of the five cosmonauts in the Voskhod program.
In 1968, Leonov was selected to be commander of a circumlunar Soyuz flight. However as all unmanned test flights of this project failed, and the Apollo 8 mission already given that step in the Space Race to the USA, the flight was canceled. He was also selected to be the first Soviet person to land on the Moon, aboard the LOK/N1
spacecraft. This project was also canceled. (Incidentally, the design
required a risky spacewalk between lunar vehicles, something that
contributed to his selection.) Leonov was to have been commander of the
ill-fated 1971 Soyuz 11 mission to Salyut 1, the first manned space station, but his crew was replaced with the backup after the cosmonaut Valery Kubasov was suspected to have contracted tuberculosis.
Leonov was to have commanded the next mission to Salyut 1, but this
was scrapped after the deaths of the Soyuz 11 crew members, and the
space station was lost. The next two Salyuts (actually the military Almaz station) were lost at launch or failed soon after, and Leonov's crew stood by. By the time Salyut 4 reached orbit Leonov had been switched to a more prestigious project.Leonov's second trip into space was similarly significant: he commanded the Soviet half of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission -- Soyuz 19 -- the first joint space mission between the Soviet Union and the United States.
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 is an accomplished artist whose published books include albums
of his artistic works and works he did in collaboration with his friend
Andrei Sokolov. Leonov has taken colored pencils and paper into space,
where he has sketched the Earth and drawn portraits of the Apollo
astronauts who flew with him during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.[1] Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his notes to 2010: Odyssey Two that, after a 1968 screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Leonov pointed out to him that the alignment of the Moon, Earth, and
Sun shown in the opening is essentially the same as that in Leonov's
1967 painting Near the Moon, although the painting's diagonal
framing of the scene was not replicated in the film. Clarke kept an
autographed sketch of this painting—which Leonov made after the
screening, hanging on his office wall.In 2001, he was a vice president of Moscow-based Alfa Bank and an advisor to the first deputy of the Board.
In 2004, Leonov and former American astronaut David Scott began work on a dual biography / history of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Titled Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race, it was published in 2006. Neil Armstrong and Tom Hanks both wrote introductions to the book.
Leonov was also a contributor to the 2007 book Into That Silent Sea by Colin Burgess and Francis French, which describes his life and career in space exploration.
