History of Space Travel, Episode 13: The Mission of Apollo-Soyuz

Video from the channel A/V Geeks 16mm Films about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:26. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, presented as the final episode of a series on the history of space travel recorded at the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. It covers the whole mission: the launches of Soyuz from Baikonur and Apollo from Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on July 15, the jettisoning of the docking module from the second stage in the first hours of flight, the roughly 40-hour approach, and docking at about 140 miles above the Atlantic, near Portugal. It continues with crew transfers between the spacecraft, congratulatory messages from Leonid Brezhnev and the US president, the exchange of flags, the signing of certificates for the International Aeronautical Federation, the joint meal, a guided tour of both spacecraft for the public of the two countries, and the gift of spruce seeds and the two halves of a commemorative medal.

The footage dates from July 1975: communications with the Houston and Moscow control centers, television images from orbit, and training scenes from previous years. It features the crew: Thomas Stafford, commander of Apollo 10; Deke Slayton, one of the original seven astronauts, returned to flight status in 1972; Vance Brand, on his first flight; Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space aboard Voskhod 2 in 1965; and Valeri Kubasov, who carried out the first weightless welding experiments aboard Soyuz 6. The technical teams were led by Glynn Lunney and Konstantin Bushuyev.

The mission capped more than three years of preparation following the agreement signed in Moscow in 1972, with joint working groups in five areas and a compatible docking system conceived as a standard for future rescues. It was the last Apollo-Saturn flight. The film shows experiments such as the artificial solar eclipse, ultraviolet absorption between the two spacecraft, killifish on board, extreme ultraviolet observation, and measurement of variations in Earth's gravity with the docking module detached. Soyuz landed in Central Asia and Apollo splashed down west of Hawaii, next to the USS New Orleans; during reentry, thruster gases entered the cabin and the crew spent a few days under observation. The film closes by pointing toward the Space Shuttle and the European Spacelab.