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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo–Soyuz | 3/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo–Soyuz | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:35:17.063113+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Apollo flew with a three-man crew on board: Tom Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton. Stafford had already flown into space three times, including within eight nautical miles of the lunar surface as Commander of Apollo 10, and was the first general officer to fly into space. He was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force at the time of the flight; he would retire with three stars in 1979. Slayton was one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts selected in 1959, but an irregular heartbeat grounded him until 1972. He became head of NASA's astronaut office and, after a lengthy medical program, selected himself for this mission. At the time, Slayton was the oldest person to fly in space and the one with the longest gap between selection as an astronaut and first flight into space. Brand, meanwhile, had trained with the Apollo spacecraft during his time as a backup Apollo 15 command module pilot, and had served two stints as a backup Skylab commander. The closest he had come to flying prior to ASTP was as commander for the Skylab Rescue mission mustered to potentially retrieve the crew of Skylab 3 due to a fuel leak on that mission's Apollo CSM.
The Soyuz flew with two men: Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov. Leonov became the first man to walk in space on Voskhod 2 in March 1965. Kubasov, who flew on Soyuz 6 in 1969, ran some of the earliest space manufacturing experiments. Both were to have flown on the ill-fated Soyuz 11 in 1971 (Leonov as commander, Kubasov as the flight engineer), but were grounded because Kubasov was suspected of having tuberculosis. The two-man crew on the Soyuz was a result of the modifications needed to allow the cosmonauts to wear the Sokol space suit during launch, docking, and reentry.
The ASTP-class Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft used was a variation of the post-Soyuz 11 two-man design, with the batteries replaced by solar panels enabling "solo" flights (missions not docking to one of the Salyut space stations). It was designed to operate, during the docking phase, at a reduced nitrogen/oxygen pressure of 10.2 psi (70 kPa), allowing easier transfers between the Apollo and Soyuz. Six ASTP-class Soyuz spacecraft were built in total, including the one used. Before the actual mission, two craft were launched uncrewed as Kosmos satellites. The third was launched as the crewed Soyuz 16 flight as a rehearsal in order to test the APAS docking mechanism. Another craft was used fully fueled as a "hot backup" at the launch site – later it was disassembled. And the sixth craft was available as a "cold" backup; it was later used on the last "solo" Soyuz flight in 1976, but with the APAS docking adapter replaced by the MKF-6 multispectral camera.
=== Launch and mission ===
The Soyuz and Apollo flights launched within seven-and-a-half hours of each other on 15 July 1975, and docked on 17 July 1975. Three hours later, the two mission commanders, Stafford and Leonov, exchanged the first international handshake in space through the open hatch of the Soyuz. NASA had calculated that the historic handshake would have taken place over the British seaside resort of Bognor Regis, but a delay resulted in its occurrence being over the city of Metz in France. During the first crew exchange, the crews were read a statement from Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, and received a phone call from U.S. President Gerald Ford. While the two ships were docked, the three Americans and two Soviets conducted joint scientific experiments, exchanged flags and gifts (including tree seeds which were later planted in the two countries), listened to each other's music (examples include "Tenderness" by Maya Kristalinskaya and "Why Can't We Be Friends?" by War), signed certificates, visited each other's ships, ate together, and conversed in each other's languages. (Because of Stafford's pronounced drawl when speaking Russian, Leonov later joked that there were three languages spoken on the mission: Russian, English, and "Oklahomski".) There were also docking and redocking maneuvers, during which the two spacecraft reversed roles and the Soyuz became the "active" ship. American scientists developed four of the experiments performed during the mission. Embryologist Jane Oppenheimer analyzed the effects of weightlessness on fish eggs at various stages of development. The ships were docked for 1 day, 23 hours, seven minutes, and three seconds. After 44 hours together, the two ships separated, and maneuvered to use the Apollo to create an artificial solar eclipse to allow the crew of the Soyuz to take photographs of the solar corona. Another brief docking was made before the ships went their separate ways. The Soviets remained in space for two more days, and the Americans for five, during which the Apollo crew also conducted Earth observation experiments.
=== Re-entry and aftermath ===