Documental sobre la cooperación espacial entre Estados Unidos y Rusia

Video from the channel NASA STI Program about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 24:24. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Institutional documentary from NASA's scientific and technical information program presenting the plan for crewed space cooperation between the United States and Russia to build a permanent international laboratory in orbit. It combines historical footage from both countries' programs, simulations of the future complex, and statements from officials, astronauts, cosmonauts and experts.

The journey begins with the first orbital launch from the steppes of Central Asia on October 4, 1957, and evokes pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. It reviews the first crewed flights and the lunar goal, and then the first stations: Salyut in the spring of 1971 and Skylab two years later. Within that framework, agreements are signed for spacecraft of both countries to meet and dock in orbit; the Apollo-Soyuz project succeeds in July 1975, amid détente, though further cooperation remains only an idea. Each country then goes its own way: one with a reusable spacecraft, the shuttle, and the other with the Mir station. As the world situation changes, both agree to resume joint crewed flight alongside international partners.

The plan has three phases. In the first, up to ten shuttle flights will dock with Mir starting in 1995; before that, two veteran cosmonauts will fly on the shuttle and an American astronaut will travel to Mir on a Soyuz. It envisions perfecting automatic rendezvous and docking, installing new solar arrays, and upgrading the station's thermal, computer, communications and stabilization systems. The second phase joins American and Russian hardware, with an American pressurized laboratory, a Russian service module, docking nodes and two trusses with solar panels, as the core of the future station. The third completes the International Space Station with modules from Japan and the European Space Agency, a Canadian robotic system and a permanent crew of six, at more than 200 miles of altitude. The speakers highlight microgravity research in life sciences and materials science.