The Mission of Apollo-Soyuz (1975) - NASA Documentary

Video from the channel Conrad Heil about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:01. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

Official NASA film about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. It follows the countdown and launch of the Apollo spacecraft atop the last Saturn in the series, the liftoff of the Soyuz from Baikonur, the extraction of the docking module and the final approach, with communications between the crews and the control centers. After docking, it shows the transfers between spacecraft, congratulatory messages from Brezhnev and the US president, the exchange of flags, the signing of the docking certificates for the International Aeronautical Federation, a dinner on board and the press conference from orbit. The film also explains the joint experiments: an electric furnace for alloys and crystals, an artificial solar eclipse in which Apollo blocked the solar disk so Soyuz could photograph the corona, a second docking, and the ultraviolet-absorption measurement of oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere.

The footage dates from July 1975 and combines images from the Kennedy Space Center, Baikonur, the Houston and Moscow control centers, onboard television, the Soyuz landing in Soviet Central Asia, and the Apollo splashdown in the Pacific west of Hawaii. The description places it as a 1975 NASA production, re-uploaded within a later compilation.

The mission fulfilled the space agreement signed in Moscow in 1972 and was prepared over more than three years by teams led by Glynn Lunney and Konstantin Bushuyev, organized into five working groups, with a docking system whose interface was a unique design. The crew was made up of Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton on the American side, and Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov on the Soviet side. It was the last flight of the Apollo program: after separation, Apollo continued solo with the rest of its 27 experiments. During reentry, gases from the attitude-control thrusters entered the command module and the crew was hospitalized for a few days in Hawaii. The film closes by presenting the Space Shuttle and the European Spacelab as heirs to this cooperation.