Spacewalks – facts and figures

The first ever spacewalk was performed by Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in March 1965 and lasted 24 minutes.

The first untethered EVA was carried out by Bruce McCandless II in February 1984, during a mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

The first woman to do an EVA was cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. She left the Salyut 7 space station for a spacewalk in July 1984.

The first European astronaut to perform a spacewalk was Jean-Loup Chretien during his three week stay on the Mir space station in 1988.

The most experienced spacewalker in the world is Anatoly Solovyev. With 16 spacewalks and a total of 77 hours and 41 minutes outside of a spacecraft, he holds the record for the most EVAs performed.

The most experienced spacewalker in the European Astronaut Corps is Luca Parmitano. During his Beyond mission he performed four spacewalks to maintain the dark matter hunter AMS-02.