March 18

What happened on March 18 in aviation and space history.

• March 18, 1965

  First spacewalk in history (Leonov, Voskhod 2)

  Space milestone — On 18 March 1965 Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov left the Voskhod 2 spacecraft and carried out the first spacewalk in history, lasting 12 minutes and 9 seconds. The Vostok-derived craft carried two crew members, Pavel Belyayev and Leonov, and was fitted with an inflatable airlock. It was a decisive step towards all later human work outside a spacecraft.

• March 18, 2010

  First vertical landing of an F-35B at Patuxent River

  Milestone — Test aircraft BF-01, again flown by Graham Tomlinson, made a short take-off at 80 knots at 13:09 Eastern time and thirteen minutes later brought the aircraft to a hover 150 feet above the airfield at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. It held the hover for about a minute and descended onto a marked 95-foot landing spot. The shaft-driven lift fan system delivered more than 41,000 pounds of vertical thrust during the manoeuvre.