Apollo-Soyuz '75 - News Coverage Captures Landmark Moment in Cold War Space Race (1975)

Video from the channel Frontline by ITN about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 25:40. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

ITN special program about the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission, broadcast after the Apollo astronauts' first full 24 hours of flight, while their spacecraft chased the Soyuz to dock the following day. Presenter Reggie Bosanquet opens with the problem of a stuck docking probe that the crew fixed during the day. Science editor Peter Fairley comments on the first television pictures: Vance Brand and Tom Stafford in the command module, the separation of the stage that put them into orbit, and Deke Slayton checking the docking tunnel, about 11 feet long and 5 feet in diameter. This is followed by footage from the Soyuz, with Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov in the orbital module, once the Soviet camera, which had broken down, was repaired.

It was recorded in 1975 in ITN's space studio, with footage sent from both spacecraft and shots from Houston mission control. Appearing in the studio are Geoffrey Perry, a science teacher at Kettering Grammar School, who shows the globe and recorder his school uses to track Soviet spacecraft telemetry, and an aerospace medicine consultant.

Perry explains how they detected the Soyuz 11 pressure loss, the previous tests with Soyuz 16, and what Soviet seals reveal about the spacecraft's equipment. Fairley reviews the experiments: the search for extreme ultraviolet radiation; an artificial eclipse in which the Apollo moves away about 600 feet to block the Sun's disk for the Soyuz's cameras; the measurement of oxygen and nitrogen with a laser and a reflector, and photometers to measure atmospheric pollution. The doctor details the atrial fibrillation detected in Slayton in 1959, which grounded him, the onboard cardiac kit, and the difference in atmospheres between the two spacecraft. Because of the risk of decompression, the Soviets lowered the pressure in theirs. It closes with a discussion on the military use of space, with reconnaissance satellites, anti-satellite tests and navigation, and the announcement of the docking and handshake planned for the following day.