Classic NASA Film - Apollo Soyuz - #1

Video from the channel Discovery about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 3:00. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

Excerpt from the NASA film "The Mission of Apollo Soyuz", with scenes from the preparation of the joint Soviet-American flight. It shows the three Apollo astronauts: Thomas Stafford, the commander; Vance Brand, command module pilot; and Donald Slayton, docking module pilot. Slayton explains that the module is basically an airlock with a new docking mechanism and a hatch at each end, and that it is extracted from the rocket the same way the lunar module was.

The footage is from the period before the 1975 launch, when the project had been in preparation for nearly three years.

Stafford summarizes the flight plan. Apollo would lift off seven and a half hours after the Soviet spacecraft and would take about two days to reach it. The docking would take place over the Soviet Union, with television coverage, and the spacecraft would remain joined for two days. For the nine-day flight, 27 experiments were planned, including a telescope for the extreme ultraviolet.