Encuentro espacial Apolo Soyuz

Video from the channel Que no te cuenten la Historia about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 6:35. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Spanish-language explainer piece from the show «Que no te cuenten la historia», hosted by Carlos Gilbert, about the orbital meeting of the American Apollo spacecraft and the Soviet Soyuz in July 1975.

It places the mission in the Cold War, with the world divided into two blocs and a space race carried out against the backdrop of the nuclear threat. The "handshake in space" was born three years earlier, with the agreement signed by Richard Nixon and Alexei Kosygin. For the Soviet Union, the mission showed it could carry out a flight on a par with NASA after losing the race to the Moon. For the United States it marked the end of an era: the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft and of an American capsule in the 20th century.

The docking took place on 17 July 1975 at 225 km above Earth and lasted 44 hours. The spacecraft later docked again for about three hours. The Soviet launch was broadcast live for the first time in the history of its space program. Soyuz 19 landed on 21 July after five days and 22 hours in space, and Apollo splashed down in the Pacific on 24 July. The crew included cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov and astronaut Thomas Stafford. NASA did not put astronauts back into orbit until six years later.