High prices for history of space
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.WHEN Alexei Leonov - the world's first space walker - climbed out of his space capsule he was struck by an 'unusual silence', writes Esther Oxford. 'I heard my heart pumping. I heard myself breathing. When I looked down. It occurred to me, so, the earth is in fact round,' he said.
This weekend Mr Leonov's training suit (pictured left) for the first space walk on 18 March 1965 was sold at auction for dollars 255,500 ( pounds 171,000). It was one of 200 artefacts recording three decades of Soviet space travel to be sold at Sotheby's in New York. The collection fetched dollars 6.82m ( pounds 4.6m).
Included in the sale were journals and diaries chronicling the ups and downs of the Soviet space programme, and two space capsules - one of them reusable. Both capsules were bought by an anonymous American bidder for dollars 1.6m ( pounds 1.1m) and dollars 552,500 ( pounds 371,000).
Among the oddities was a guitar that has been circling the Earth since 1987 aboard the Russian space station Mir. It made dollars 13,000 ( pounds 8,700).
Emmet Stephenson, a self-described 'space nut', was among the happiest people at the auction. He paid between dollars 400,000 and dollars 500,000 ( pounds 268,000- pounds 336,000) for four spacesuits and 15 other artefacts, including the pressure suit that the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, used to train for his 1961 mission.
Photograph: Edward Webb
(Photograph omitted)
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments