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Spacewalks: Working Outside the Spacecraft

The First Person to Leave a Spacecraft

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk in history on March 18, 1965, spending about 12 minutes outside his Voskhod 2 capsule connected only by a 5-meter tether. His suit ballooned so much in the vacuum of space that he struggled to fit back through the airlock hatch and had to partially deflate it, a dangerous close call that shaped how future spacesuits were designed.

Why Tethers and Handrails Are Everywhere

Spacecraft and space stations are covered in dedicated handrails and tether attachment points specifically so an astronaut always has something secure to grip or clip onto during a spacewalk. NASA calls this practice the "three points of contact" rule, meaning tools, tethers, or hands should always keep the astronaut connected to the vehicle, preventing an uncontrolled drift into open space.

What a Spacesuit Actually Does

A modern spacewalk suit, officially called an Extravehicular Mobility Unit, is essentially a one-person spacecraft, supplying oxygen, removing exhaled carbon dioxide, regulating temperature, and protecting against micrometeorite impacts and intense solar radiation. Suits typically carry eight to nine hours of life support, matching the length of a full spacewalk shift outside the International Space Station.

Repairing a Space Station From the Outside

Spacewalks are often used to install new equipment, replace worn batteries and solar arrays, or fix external damage on the International Space Station, work that cannot be done from inside a pressurized module. Some of the most complex spacewalk repairs, including servicing the Hubble Space Telescope across five separate shuttle missions between 1993 and 2009, required astronauts to perform delicate mechanical work while wearing thick, pressurized gloves.

Training for a Spacewalk on Earth

Before a real spacewalk, astronauts train for hundreds of hours inside NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a giant indoor pool holding a full-size mockup of the space station, where a suit's buoyancy is carefully balanced to mimic the weightless drift of true microgravity. This underwater rehearsal lets astronauts practice handling tools and navigating handrails long before they ever open a real airlock hatch.

A View Unlike Any Other

Astronauts performing a spacewalk describe watching Earth's curved horizon sweep past roughly every 90 minutes, since the International Space Station completes a full orbit that quickly, meaning a single spacewalk shift can include several sunrises and sunsets. Many astronauts have called the view outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk the most striking sight of their entire mission.

Gloves Built for a Job in a Vacuum

Spacesuit gloves are among the hardest parts of the suit to design well, since they must stay pressurized and protective while still letting an astronaut grip small bolts, switches, and tools with reasonable feel. Engineers have spent decades refining glove joints and fingertip materials, and astronauts often describe hand fatigue as one of the most physically tiring parts of a long spacewalk, since simply squeezing a pressurized glove repeatedly works muscles far harder than an ordinary task on Earth. Some astronauts have compared a full spacewalk shift to squeezing a stress ball thousands of times in a row, which is why hand and forearm strength training is now a required part of every spacewalker's preparation.