Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov trains for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in April 1975 . (Credit: NASA)

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first
person to walk in space, has died at the age of 85 at the Burdenko Military
Hospital in Moscow. His death was announced Friday, Oct. 11, by Roscosmos,
Russia’s space agency.

Born in 1934, Leonov became the eleventh Soviet
cosmonaut and achieved major milestones of space exploration. During the
Voskhod 2 mission, on March 18, 1965, he exited his capsule for 1