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[i]Contemporary documents and video footage have become available over the past year that tell a different story. In his own words — written immediately after the Voskhod-2 mission but made public only this month — Leonov said he had planned to drop the suit pressure all along: "(My) first attempt to (re)enter (the airlock) did not succeed..." he wrote. "Back on Earth, I thought up what to do if the first entry would not work. I was planning back on Earth to switch the pressure to 0.27 atmospheres (from nominal 0.4 atmospheres). My estimates were confirmed, that is exactly how it happened..." In the same report, Leonov confirmed that he had been tired at the end of his spacewalk, but hardly exhausted, and only in comparison to his 25-second training sessions during parabolic flights on a weightlessness-simulating aircraft. Leonov describes a rather minor struggle to re-enter the airlock, but makes it clear he entered legs-first. He never mentions a desperate head-first dive... The recently released footage [start watching at about the 1:00:30 mark of the Russian-language video below] unequivocally proves that Leonov re-entered the airlock feet-first, holding the camera exactly as described in his post-flight report. Which means, of course, that there was no harrowing flip inside the airlock.[/i]
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