General Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov has passed away at the age of 85. Twice awarded Hero of the USSR and son of a family targeted by the purges at the height of the pre-war Terror, he was one of the first group of cosmonauts, and in 1965 had a number of harrowing close shaves during Voshkod 2 (with Pavel Belyayev) where he performed the first spacewalk. Leonov was intended to command a mission to Salyut 1 in 1971, but the loss of the Soyuz 11 crew, and the problems with the later Salyut space stations, delayed his second space flight until Apollo-Soyuz in 1975. Afterwards he served as commander of the cosmonaut section, overseeing training and the cosmonaut newspaper, until his retirement in 1992 after the dissolution of the USSR.