The Apollo-Soyuz mission (July 1975)

Video from the channel GAZMaracaibo about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:49. Language: Spanish. Video type: Archive footage.

Spanish-dubbed film about the Apollo-Soyuz mission that follows the joint flight of a US Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz, from preparations to the return of both crews. It combines footage of both launches, of the Houston and Moscow control centers, of life on board and of the ceremonies in orbit with crew communications. It introduces the five crew members: Thomas Stafford, Apollo commander and previously on Apollo 10; Donald "Deke" Slayton, one of the first seven astronauts, grounded by a heart condition and reinstated in 1972 as docking module pilot; Vance Brand, command module pilot on his first spaceflight; Alexei Leonov, Soyuz commander and the first man to walk in space in 1965 with Voskhod 2, and Valeri Kubasov, flight engineer who had carried out the first zero-gravity welding experiments on Soyuz 6.

The footage is from July 1975: the countdown and liftoff of the last Apollo Saturn at Kennedy Space Center, the launch of the Soyuz on 15 July, which reached orbit in under nine minutes, and the images transmitted from the spacecraft. The narration speaks of the space shuttle as a project with its first orbital flight planned for 1979, which places the production shortly after the mission.

The flight stemmed from the 1972 space agreement between the two countries, which included developing the first universal docking system: each country built its own half and the connecting interface was a shared design. The film covers the docking, the first crew exchange, Leonid Brezhnev's message, the exchange of flags, the signing of certificates from the Paris-based international federation that validates aeronautical and space records, the joint dinner, the spruce seeds offered as a gift and the joining of the two halves of a medal. The experiments include a furnace for alloys and crystals, an artificial solar eclipse in which the Apollo blocked the Sun so the Soyuz could photograph the corona, a second docking and an ultraviolet absorption measurement in the upper atmosphere. The Soyuz landed in Soviet Central Asia. The Apollo remained in orbit for the rest of its 27 experiments and splashed down in the Pacific, west of Hawaii. During reentry, thruster gas leaked into the command module; the crew fixed the problem and spent a few days under observation in a hospital in Hawaii.