APOLLO-SOYUZ: OS 50 ANOS DA PRIMEIRA MISSÃO ESPACIAL INTERNACIONAL TRIPULADA

Video from the channel DocVonBraun Channel about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 7:25. Language: Portuguese. Video type: Documentary.

Commemorative piece in Portuguese from the DocVonBraun channel, narrated with a synthetic voice, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the docking of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft. It was the first international crewed space mission, shared by the United States and the Soviet Union.

It places the mission within the Cold War and the budget cuts NASA suffered after the Moon landing. It recalls that both countries were already docking spacecraft to orbital stations (Apollo to Skylab since 1973 and Soviet craft to the Salyut stations since 1971) and that the 1972 cooperation agreement committed them to carrying out the joint mission. It introduces astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton, and cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov, who trained together between 1973 and 1975 in Houston and at the Yuri Gagarin training centre near Moscow.

The two spacecraft docked on 17 July 1975, and the handshake between Stafford and Leonov took place above the French city of Metz. The Soyuz landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan on 21 July and the Apollo splashed down in the Pacific on 24 July. According to the video, it was the first mission to televise to the world the launch and landing of a Soviet spacecraft. The piece links the experience to the 1994–1998 cooperation in which US space shuttles docked with Mir using a docking collar originally developed for Buran, and to the International Space Station. It ends with the author's recollection of the mission's exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.