The Apollo Soyuz Mission | Apollo-Soyuz United

Video from the channel Cosmo about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:10. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

This is the official NASA film about the Apollo-Soyuz mission. It begins with the launches: first Soyuz from Baikonur, and hours later the last Apollo-Saturn from the Kennedy Space Center, with the extraction of the docking module from the second stage. Next come the orbital rendezvous and soft docking, with the Moscow and Houston control centers giving their approval. Then come the crew transfers between the spacecraft, congratulatory messages from Brezhnev and President Ford, the exchange of flags and the signing of the International Aeronautical Federation's docking certificates. The crews dine together, join the two halves of a commemorative medallion, and Stafford gives Leonov spruce seeds to plant on Soviet soil. The film also shows the spacecraft separating to simulate an artificial solar eclipse, a second docking, the ultraviolet-absorption experiment, and the Soyuz landing in Central Asia by parachute and retro-rockets. The film closes with Apollo's solo days, featuring killifish experiments, the detection of extreme-ultraviolet radiation, the search for soft X-ray sources and Earth observation, and finally the splashdown west of Hawaii and the reception aboard the USS New Orleans.

The footage is from mid-July 1975 and comes from the launch pads at Kennedy and Baikonur, the Houston and Moscow control centers, onboard cameras and the recovery ship. It also includes scenes of the preparation in the preceding years with both crews.

The mission fulfilled the space agreement signed in Moscow in 1972 and came after more than three years of preparation. It was led by Glynn Lunney on the American side and Konstantin Bushuyev on the Soviet side, with joint groups devoted to communications, life support, planning, guidance and mechanical design, which included the first universal docking system. The film introduces the crew members: Leonov, who made the first spacewalk in 1965 aboard Voskhod 2; Stafford, commander of Apollo 10; Slayton, one of the original seven astronauts, grounded by a heart irregularity and returned to flight status in 1972; Kubasov, who performed the first welding experiments in space aboard Soyuz 6; and Brand, flying to space for the first time. The film also notes that, during reentry, gases from the attitude-control thrusters entered the command module. It closes by looking ahead to the Space Shuttle and Spacelab.