Apollo-Soyuz: Inside the First International Space Mission | FULL DOCUMENTARY

Video from the channel SLICE Full Doc about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 52:53. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A 2016 documentary directed by Thomas Risch that reconstructs the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first international space mission, with testimonies from its Soviet and American protagonists. It follows the political genesis of the agreement, the technical and human preparation of the crews, the joint flight and Apollo's troubled return.

The piece places the mission squarely in the Cold War, after the space race that took the Soviet Union to the first orbital milestones and the United States to the Moon. The détente of the early 1970s, with Nixon's visit to Moscow in May 1972 and the signing of SALT I, opened the door to a space cooperation agreement that envisaged a common docking system and an experimental flight for 1975. The mission was presented to the public at the 1973 Le Bourget Air Show. The documentary dwells on the mutual distrust of both sides, surveillance by intelligence services and fears of technology transfer, and on how the teams learned each other's language and worked without talking about politics.

The American crew consisted of Thomas Stafford, a veteran of three flights and commander of Apollo 10; Vance Brand, on his first flight; and Deke Slayton, selected in 1958 for Mercury and grounded by a heart condition. The Soviet crew was Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space in March 1965, and Valeri Kubasov. The docking system chosen was an androgynous petal design, identical on both sides, which each country built using its own methods. On April 28, 1975, the Americans visited Baikonur. On July 15, the Soyuz launched first, its liftoff broadcast live for the first time, and hours later Apollo launched on the last Saturn IB. After about 44 hours of pursuit, the spacecraft docked on July 17, and Stafford and Leonov shook hands before an estimated audience of one billion people. They remained joined for two days, with crew exchanges, joint experiments and a press conference from space. During Apollo's reentry, nitrogen tetroxide fumes entered the cabin; Brand lost consciousness and the three astronauts were hospitalized after the Pacific splashdown on July 24.