Apollo Soyuz (1975) Documentary on the US - Russian space mission

Video from the channel Manic Movies about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:09. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

Period film about the Apollo-Soyuz mission that combines footage of the launches, communications from the Houston and Moscow control centres and onboard recordings. It shows the Soyuz lifting off from Baikonur and the last Apollo-Saturn lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center on 15 July 1975, the extraction of the docking module and the final approach, with the distance called out in metres down to contact and capture. This is followed by the opening of hatches and crew transfers, messages from the leaders of both countries, the exchange of flags, the signing of Fédération Aéronautique Internationale certificates, an onboard dinner, televised visits to both spacecraft, the joining of the two halves of a medallion and the gift of fir-tree seeds. Later come the artificial solar eclipse, a second docking, the ultraviolet absorption experiment, the Soyuz landing in Central Asia and the Apollo's solo experiments until its splashdown west of Hawaii.

The footage was shot in 1975 at the Kennedy launch control, at the Houston and Moscow control centres, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and with cameras aboard the spacecraft. The narration gives the shuttle's first orbital flight as planned for 1979, which places the production shortly after the mission.

It introduces the crew: Stafford, commander of Apollo 10; Slayton, one of the original seven astronauts, who had been grounded by a heart irregularity and was reinstated in 1972; Brand, on his first flight; Leonov, the first man to walk in space aboard Voskhod 2 in 1965, and Kubasov, who carried out the first weightless welding experiments aboard Soyuz 6. It explains the space agreement signed in Moscow in 1972, the five joint working groups led by Glynn Lunney and Konstantin Bushuyev, and the shared design of the docking interface. It mentions that during re-entry, fumes from the attitude-control thrusters entered the cabin and that the crew were kept under observation in Hawaii. It closes by presenting the mission as a precedent for the shuttle and the European Spacelab.