Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov is a retired Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human to make a "spacewalk" on March 18, 1965 in the Voskhod 2 flight. The spacewalk lasted 12 minutes during which he was outside the spacecraft but connected to it by a five-foot long tether. At the end of his spacewalk, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point that he could not reenter through the airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the air from the suit to escape and barely managed to get back inside the capsule.