Apollo-Soyuz: The Handshake that Ended the Space Race
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On July 17, 1975, a handshake between two pilots ended the nearly 20-year long Space Race, a competition between the United States and Soviet Union for space superiority. For two days, the crewmen shared meals, performed joint science experiments, and held press conferences in an environment of cooperation unfathomable when the Space Race kicked off in late 1957.
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), or Experimental flight "Soyuz"–"Apollo" in Russia, was the first crewed international space mission in history and paved the way for contemporary international cooperation in space.
Thawing the Cold War
In 1962, after both the U.S. and USSR achieved manned orbital spaceflight, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and Soviet representative on the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Anatoly Blagonravov began discussing plans for American/Soviet cooperation in space biology and medicine [1]. According to the 1976 report "Soviet Space Programs, 1971–1975" prepared for the use of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences by the Science Policy Research Division of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, the three projects were as follows:
"Coordinated U.S. and Soviet launchings of experimental meteorological satellites, with data to be exchanged over a Washington-Moscow 'cold line'
launchings by both countries of satellites equipped with absolute magnetometers with subsequent exchange of data to arrive at a map of Earth's magnetic field in space
joint communications experiments using Echo 2 the U.S. passive satellite" (Zegel, 1976) [2].
The results of all three were disappointing.
The implementation of the Dryden-Blagonravov Agreement, the formalization of their plans, was announced at the United Nations on December 5, 1962. However, President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Premier Nikita Khrushchev's removal from power in 1964, increasing geopolitical tension between the U.S. and USSR in the latter half of the 1960s, and intensified competition to land men on the moon forced the sidelining of cooperative space efforts.
That is not to say goodwill regarding manned exploration of space did not exist between the two superpowers in the late 1960s. On January 27, 1967, the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union ratified the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (or the Outer Space Treaty for short), the foundation of international space law. Article V states the following: "States Parties to the Treaty shall regard astronauts as envoys of mankind in outer space and shall render to them all possible assistance in the event of accident, distress, or emergency landing on the territory of another State Party or on the high seas....In carrying on activities in outer space and on celestial bodies, the astronauts of one State Party shall render all possible assistance to the astronauts of other State Parties."
The 1968 Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space (or simply the Rescue Agreement) is built upon Article V of the Outer Space Treaty. During the Apollo 13 crisis in April 1970, the Soviet Union offered its assistance in retrieving the stranded astronauts. Despite the nations' negative views of each other, there was a shared understanding that mankind's exploration of space was greater than those conflicts on Earth.
By the time the spring of 1971 rolled around, ten years after both nations sent their first citizen into space, the United States had landed men on the moon three times and the Soviet Union was operating the world's first space station, Salyut. Encouraged by President Richard Nixon's policy of détente, or easing of tension with the Soviet Union, NASA and the Soviet Academy of Sciences discussed the possibility of a docking mission between an American spacecraft and a Soviet spacecraft. This could be the docking of an Apollo and a Soyuz, an Apollo and the new Salyut, or a Soyuz and the upcoming Skylab space station.
Neither side agreed with the other's engineering. Americans criticized the largely-autonomous design and operations of the Soyuz spacecraft while the Soviets disliked the complexity of the Apollo spacecraft. NASA contracted North American Rockwell, the builder of the Apollo spacecraft, to develop a docking module. The Soviets designed an androgynous docking system that could be used for joint missions. This would become the Androgynous Peripheral Attach System. In April 1972, the nations agreed that their joint mission would involve the docking of an Apollo and a Soyuz. On May 24, President Nixon and Premier Alexei Kosygin signed the Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes, the legal framework for the ASTP.
Spacecraft
The Soviet half of the mission was designated Soyuz 19 and was part of the ongoing Soyuz program, which had its first successful manned flight in 1968 and is still flying today. The Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft was manufactured by NPO Energia and flew in space five times between April 1974 and September 1976. It was a derivative of the 2nd generation Soyuz 7K-T spacecraft specifically for Apollo-Soyuz. The Soyuz 7K-T was introduced after the Soyuz 11 tragedy in 1971[3]. The 7K-T sat only two crewmen to accommodate their pressure suits and other life support systems. Designed to be a ferry to the Salyut space stations, it was not suitable for multi-day spaceflight and relied on rechargeable batteries. The 7K-TM replaced the batteries with solar panels so it could spend multiple days in space without visiting a space station.
It had a height of 24.5 feet (7.48 m), a diameter of 8 feet and 11 inches (2.72 m), and a habitable volume of 320 cubic feet (9 cubic m). The Androgynous Peripheral Attach System (APAS) docking collar launched onboard Soyuz 19. Two unmanned Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft flew in 1974 as Kosmos 638 and Kosmos 672 to test the APAS-75 docking system. Soyuz 16 tested the APAS manned. The Apollo-Soyuz backup spacecraft flew an Earth sciences mission as Soyuz 22 in 1976.
The Americans used the Apollo command and service module CSM-111 manufactured by North American Rockwell. This mission was not a flight of the Apollo program, which had ended in 1972. Rather, it used leftover hardware from the canceled lunar missions. The CSM could sustain a crew of three for 14 days and had a length of 36.2 feet (11 m) and a diameter of 12.8 feet (3.9 m). The conical command module had a height of 11.4 feet (3.48 m) and a habitable volume of 210 cubic feet (5.9 cubic m). Its Saturn IB launch vehicle, SA-210, was also surplus.
The docking module was designed by North American Rockwell and served as both an airlock and a docking adapter. The atmospheres of both spacecraft were different from one another, with Apollo pressurized at 5 pounds per square inch (psi) of pure oxygen and Soyuz pressurized at 14.7 psi of a nitrogen/oxygen mix. On one end was the same probe-and-drogue docking mechanism used on the Apollo Lunar Module and Skylab space station. This is how Apollo docked. On the other end was the APAS docking collar for Soyuz. Derivatives of Apollo-Soyuz's APAS are still used on the International Space Station. The docking module was launched in the upper stage of the Saturn IB, the S-IVB, and was retrieved by the CSM the same was the Apollo LM was. This maneuver is called the transposition and docking procedure. The CSM separated from the S-IVB, pitched 180 degrees, docked with the docking module, and extracted it from the S-IVB. The docking module had a length of about 9.8 feet (3 m) and a diameter of just under 5 feet (1.5 m), could fit two crewmen at once, and housed radio and television communication equipment.
Crew
Assigned to the mission on January 30, 1973, the American crew consisted of commander (CDR) brigadier general Thomas P. Stafford, command module pilot (CMP) Vance D. Brand, whom the Russians nicknamed Vanya, and docking module pilot (DMP) Donald K. "Deke" Slayton. Stafford was a member of NASA's second class of astronauts, the New Nine, selected in 1962 and a veteran of three previous missions—pilot of Gemini 6A (1965), command pilot of Gemini 9A (1966), and commander of Apollo 10 (1969).
Brand and Slayton were rookies. Brand was selected as an astronaut in 1966 and was backup CMP for Apollo 15 and backup commander for Skylab 3 and Skylab 4, as well as commander of the standby Skylab Rescue Mission. Slayton was selected as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, the original American astronaut corps, in 1959 but atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm) grounded him in 1962. He served as Chief of the Astronaut Office until 1964, assistant director of Flight Crew Operations until 1966, and director of Flight Crew Operations from 1966 to 1974, selecting new astronauts and assigning crews. He returned to active flight duty in March 1972. At 51 years old, he was the oldest person to fly in space at the time.
Alan Bean, Ron Evans, and Jack Lousma were the backup CDR, CMP, and DMP, respectively. The support crew was made up by Karol "Bo" Bobko, Robert Crippen, Robert Overmyer, and Richard Truly—coincidentally all former U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronauts who would later command Space Shuttle missions.
The Soviet crew was announced on May 24, 1973 and consisted of commander Alexei Leonov, the first person to perform an extravehicular activity during Voskhod 2 in March 1965, and flight engineer Valery Kubasov, veteran of Soyuz 6 (1969) [4]. Anatoly Filipchenko and Nikolai Rukavishnikov, the crew of Soyuz 16, was the alternate crew. Soyuz 16 took place in December 1974 and tested the Soyuz 7K-TM hardware to be used for the ASTP.
The spacecraft callsigns were simply Apollo and Soyuz.
Patch Me Through
The astronauts selected an insignia designed bu Jean Pinataro of North American Rockwell from an industry-wide competition. It included the spacecraft docked above Earth, stylized flags of both nations, and the spacecraft and crew names in their respective languages. When Johnson Space Center Director Chris Kraft submitted the emblem to NASA Headquarters for final approval in May 1974, it was rejected. Despite Kraft's emphasis that it was chosen by the astronauts personally, it was disapproved two more times with critiques that it was "cartoonish" and lacked adequate representation of the international significance of the mission.
Modern reproduction patch of ASTP's original insignia (A-B Emblem) | ASTP's American insignia (NASA ID: S75-20361)
Pinataro worked closely with the astronauts to redesign the patch, keeping elements from her original insignia. The central image derives from, with his permission, space artist Robert McCall's 1974 painting of an Apollo and Soyuz preparing to dock. The sun's rays are not in the formation of a cross, a typical motif in McCall's paintings, since it could be perceived as a religious symbol. The text was rearranged and the flags replaced by small stars along the border—three white against a blue background for the Americans and two gold against a red background for the Soviets.
The Soviets had their own mission insignia. The official emblem of Apollo-Soyuz used a simple color palette and simple imagery, depicting the pair of spacecraft docked in Earth orbit with the spacecraft names. It was chosen by both NASA and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The Soviet crew patch is in the shape of a pentagon, likely to represent the mission's five crewmen, with the Soviet and American flags in the center (sort of ironic since the flags were removed from the American mission patch). Leonov and Kubasov wore both the American and Soviet mission patches.
Official Apollo-Soyuz emblem (NASA ID: S74-17843) | Valery Kubasov inside Soyuz — the pentagon-shaped patch on his right shoulder is the Soviet crew patch (click to enlarge) (NASA ID: AST-05-305)
Preparation & Training
While very common today, Apollo-Soyuz was the first time American astronauts trained in Russia and vice-versa. Meetings between astronauts and cosmonauts in the 1960s were infrequent but not unheard of. Alan Shepard and John Glenn met Gherman Titov in Washington D.C. in 1962. Gemini 4 astronauts Jim McDivitt and Ed White met first man in space Yuri Gagarin at the 1965 Paris Air Show while Gemini 5 astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad (and Deke Slayton) met Voskhod 2 cosmonauts Pavel Belyavev and Alexei Leonov in Athens, Greece. In July 1969, before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman became the first American astronaut to visit the Soviet Union. This began back-and-forth visits to the superpowers by the spacemen: Georgy Beregovoy and Konstantin Feoktistov toured the Manned Spacecraft Center in October 1969, Neil Armstrong toured the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and paid his respects to fallen fellow space explorers at the Kremlin wall in May 1970, and Andriyan Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyanov visited the U.S. in October. At the same time, an official NASA delegation met with Soviet scientists in Moscow to discuss what would become Apollo-Soyuz.
The Apollo-Soyuz astronauts and cosmonauts met for the first time in Long Beach, California in July 1973. According to Deke Slayton in his 1994 autobiography Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle, "Leonov was jolly and friendly, always joking, a lot like Wally Schirra....Valery was a nice guy, but very quiet."
The astronauts and cosmonauts and their backups trained together at the Manned Spacecraft Center (renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973) in Houston, Texas and at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City outside Moscow. Both locations had mockups of both spacecraft. They reviewed science experiments, sampled each other's space food, and practiced communications protocols in both English and Russian. Flight documents and some controls were labeled in both languages as well. The Apollo astronauts became the first Americans to view Soviet launch facilities during their tour of the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 28, 1975.
According to Deke! the Soviets kept tabs on the Americans during their time in Russia. "We assumed we were under surveillance all the time. It never bothered us; it was just a fact of life." When recounting staying in the newly-build Hotel Cosmonaut in Star City he said, "It got so that whenever we wanted something, all we had to do was speak...the walls had ears. One day we decided to test it, and complained loudly that we didn't have anything to do. 'Too bad we don't have a pool table.' The next day, by God, there was a pool table in our bar downstairs. It was probably the only pool table in Russia....We called this the speak-into-the-lamp mode. We actually used it to get rid of a couple of technical people on the Russian side who weren't particularly productive: just complained about them among ourselves, when we knew someone would be listening. And we never had to deal with them again."
American and Soviet scientists at the Kennedy Space Center conducted tests of Soviet equipment to be used with the docking module since the docking module would launch with Apollo from Florida. Hardware for the ASTP underwent exhaustive testing and verification at both NASA Johnson and Star City. Additionally, three "simulation sessions between flight controllers and Apollo-Soyuz crewmen in Houston and Moscow were conducted in preparation for the flight" and "involved communications links between the two control centers, including voice, teletype, datafax, and television, and fully manned control center facilities" (Zegel, 1976). The American Applications Technology Satellite-6 was used as a link for spacecraft-to-ground communications.
Not everyone was 100% onboard with a joint American and Soviet space mission, as some Americans doubted the reliability of Soyuz hardware. Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 ended in tragedy while the launch of what would have been Soyuz 18 in April 1975 was unsuccessful. A stage separation malfunction caused the mission to be aborted and fortunately the crew was recovered safely. At the time, it was rare for the Soviets to disclose information about space failures, especially to their Western counterparts, but the "April 5th Anomaly" (the Soviet name for the incident) was only revealed to the U.S. due to its potential impact on Apollo-Soyuz, which was scheduled to launch only three months later. The Soviets reassured NASA that the booster was an older version of Soyuz 19's launch vehicle and would not be plagued by the same issues. Additionally, two complete sets of hardware would be flight-worthy for redundancy and a failure of the Soviet crew to reach orbit would not affect the safety of the American crew.
According to the 1976 report "Soviet Space Programs, 1971–1975," upon learning about the "April 5th Anomaly" U.S. Senator William Proxmire, a staunch critic of NASA and space exploration, called for a briefing on Soviet space capabilities by the CIA. In a summarized classified testimony of CIA deputy director for science and technology Carl Duckett, "I do not think they (the USSR) are in good shape to hand two missions at once from the command point of view." On July 2, Senator Proxmire urged NASA to postpone the launch of Apollo-Soyuz "until the Soviet Union brings back to Earth the Russian cosmonauts already in space." At the time, Soyuz 18 cosmonauts were living onboard Salyut 4 and were planning to stay in orbit until July 26. NASA rebutted the same day with, "...the Soyuz 18/Salyut 4 mission does not constitute a hazard to ASTP."
Launch
Apollo-Soyuz was the final launch of the Saturn rocket and the final launch of an American crew capsule for 45 years. In 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency began developing the Saturn family of rockets using technology developed during the Jupiter and Redstone missile programs. The Saturn IB was a heavy-lift, two-stage upgraded version of the Saturn I rocket and the predecessor to the mighty Saturn V (which had retired after launching Skylab in 1973). The Saturn IB launched the astronauts of Apollo 7 (1968), Skylab's 2, 3, and 4 (1973), and ASTP.
The S-IB 1st stage was a cluster of eight small Redstone tanks surrounding a Jupiter liquid oxygen tank. Four Redstone tanks held liquid oxygen while the other four held Rocket Propellant-1, a highly-refined kerosene fuel. The S-IB was powered by eight Rocketdyne H-1 engines producing a combined 1.6 million pounds (7,100 kiloNewtons) of thrust at sea level. Its 2nd stage, the S-IVB, was similar to the 3rd stage of the Saturn V and was powered by a single liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen J-2 engine producing 200,000 pounds (890 kN) of thrust. The Saturn IB had a payload to LEO capacity of 46,000 pounds (20.9 tons) and a height of 224 feet (68.3 m). A total of nine Saturn IB rockets launched from Launch Complexes 34 and 37 on Cape Kennedy and Launch Complex-39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida from 1966 to 1975. The SA-209 rocket, the only remaining flight-configured Saturn IB, is currently on display in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Rocket Garden.
Soyuz 19 launched onboard the Soyuz-U rocket, one of the most successful and reliable launch vehicles in space history. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka. The R-7 spawned the Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz space launch vehicles. The Soyuz-U was a medium-lift, 3-stage "unified" version of the crewed Soyuz and Soyuz-M rockets and the predecessor to the Soyuz-U2, Soyuz-FG, and the active Soyuz-2 crewed rockets. The Soyuz-U's first crewed launch was that of Soyuz 16 in December 1974 and its last was that of Soyuz TM-34 in November 2002 [5].
The vehicle's 1st stage consisted of four boosters surrounding the 2nd stage central core and was powered by four RD-107 engines, one on each booster, producing a combined maximum thrust of 188,500 pounds (838.5 kN) at sea level. The 1st and 2nd stages ignited simultaneously and when the booster engines finished burning, just under 2 minutes after ignition, the boosters fell away and the core stage continued firing for nearly 3 more minutes. The 3rd stage was powered by a single RD-0110 engine producing 67,000 pounds (297.9 kN) of thrust. The entire vehicle was fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. The Soyuz-U had a payload to LEO capacity of 15,200 pounds (6,900 kg) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and a height of 166 feet and 4 inches (50.7 m).
A total of 786 Soyuz-U rockets (765 successes and 21 failures for a success rate of 97.3%) launched from Baikonur and the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia from 1974 to 2017.
Apollo lifted off on Friday, July 15, 1975 at 3:50 PM local time from Launch Complex-39B. It was the last launch from the complex until STS-51L Challenger in January 1986 and the last crewed American capsule launch until SpaceX Demo-2 in May 2020. Soyuz 19 launched 7 and a half hours earlier from Launch Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and was the first live televised launch of a Soviet manned mission. To commemorate the launch, first day covers, stamps, and cigarettes were made available to the public. Apollo was inserted into a 93.2 x 103.8 mile (150 x 167 km) orbit with an inclination of 51.8°. About one hour later, the spacecraft performed the transposition and docking procedure to extract the docking module from the S-IVB. Apollo and Soyuz spent the next two days adjusting their orbits and preparing for rendezvous.
CSM-111 and docking module from Soyuz (NASA ID: AST-32-2686) | Soyuz 19 from Apollo (NASA)
Operations
10 years after performing the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft, Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A, Tom Stafford performed the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft from different nations. On Sunday, July 17, 1975, Apollo "captured" Soyuz. Leonov radioed, "Apollo and Soyuz are shaking hands now."
At 3:17 PM EDT over the city of Metz in France, Stafford and Leonov opened the hatches of their spacecraft and exchanged the first international handshake in space. The event was watched by millions. The spacemen received a phone call from President Gerald Ford in the White House and were read a statement from Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Stafford and Slayton joined Leonov and Kubasov aboard Soyuz and exchanged American and Soviet flags, signed International Aeronautical Federation certificates authenticating the first international space docking, and joined two halves of a plaque that launched onboard their respective spacecraft.
During the two days Apollo and Soyuz were docked, the astronauts and cosmonauts ate together, conducted televised press conferences and tours of the spacecraft, performed science experiments, and spoke in each other's languages. Since Stafford was from Oklahoma and had a distinct southern drawl, Leonov later dubbed his manner of speaking Russian "Oklahomski". Stafford gave an impromptu speech in Russian/Oklahomski to the Russian people: "Let the things that went on yesterday in our flight, and today, be a good thing for both our peoples."
They also listened to each other's music—"Why Can't We Be Friends?" by War, "Nezhnost" (translated as "Tenderness"), a famous Russian song inspired by Yuri Gagarin's first orbital spaceflight, and a Russian rendition of "Hello Darlin'" (translated as "Privet Radost") specially sung by Conway Twitty himself. Brand and Kubasov filmed weightlessness demonstrations to be used in classrooms and Stafford presented Leonov with a box of spruce seeds courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture's Forestry Service [6].
“In 1965, we had a first meeting—Charles Conrad, Gordon Cooper, Deke Slayton, me, and Pavel Belyayev. During a party, Deke Slayton said it was necessary for our two countries to cooperate in space. During this party I made a speech, and I proposed that we should have a drink sometime in the future—aboard our joint Soviet-American spacecraft. While Valery Kubasov and I were getting ready for our flight, I prepared several special tubes of food—only these said “Russian Vodka,” “Stolichnaya Vodka,” “Old Vodka.” During the flight, I invited our guests—Tom Stafford and Deke Slayton—to drink before eating. And when Deke said, “Alexei, ten years ago you promised me a drink of vodka in our international spacecraft,” I took out these tubes. Tom said it was not possible; there were so many people watching on TV, including the president. I said it was a Russian tradition. Tom and Deke drank…but inside the tubes was soup. Deke complained, but I told him it was the thought that counts!” — Alexei Leonov, Deke!
On July 19, the spacecraft undocked for the first time and Apollo positioned itself between Soyuz and the sun to create an artificial solar eclipse, one of 28 astronomy, Earth sciences, life sciences, and applications experiments carried out during ASTP. Other experiments included photography of the solar corona, aquarium fish embryonic development, and plant growth experiments. After docking again for three hours, for a total docked time of 1 day, 23 hours, 7 minutes, and 3 seconds, the two spacecraft undocked for the last time at 11:26 AM and the crew parted ways until September. Soyuz 19 concluded on July 21 with the first televised landing of a manned Soyuz spacecraft, touching down safely near Arkalyk in Kazakstan. It completed 96 orbits of Earth over 5 days, 22 hours, and 30 minutes. Soyuz’s descent module is now on display at the RKK Energia museum in Korolyov, Russia.
Apollo is credited with discovering two white dwarfs and observed the stars Promixa Centauri, the nearest star to Earth after the sun, SS Cygni in the constellation Cygnus, and Siruis, the brightest star in the night sky. Apollo reentered the atmosphere on July 24 after 148 orbits over 9 days, 1 hour, and 28 minutes in space.
During reentry, the two switches to shut off the reaction control system, or RCS, were not flipped. Its hypergolic propellants were vented into the cabin while intaking air from the outside, exposing the astronauts to toxic monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide fumes. While the RCS was automatically shut off before drogue parachute deployment, later than usual, the crew inhaled enough of the toxic fumes to require medical attention. Brand briefly lost consciousness and blamed the loud noise in the cabin during reentry for his inability to hear Stafford’s call to shut off the RCS. The capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Unusually, the astronauts remained inside the capsule until hoisted aboard the USS New Orleans (LPH-11) Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship and spent time in the ship’s sick bay after a short welcome reception. The crew was hospitalized in Honolulu, Hawaii for two weeks before flying to Washington, D.C. to receive their Distinguished Service medals and hold their first post-mission press conference. Stafford was also promoted to Major General in the Air Force. The astronauts and cosmonauts spent two weeks in Russia and two weeks in the U.S. in September and October.
Upon splashing down, Apollo was the last ocean landing of a manned spacecraft for 45 years. Immediately after Apollo-Soyuz, the Saturn rocket and Apollo spacecraft were retired and work began to convert Launch Complex 39B and the Vehicle Assembly Building to support the Space Shuttle. No American flew in space during the six years between Apollo-Soyuz and STS-1 Columbia, the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle in 1981. Apollo is now on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California.
Epilogue
The Soviet and later Russian Bion program carried biological payloads for multiple countries around the world, including the United States beginning in November 1975 with Bion 3 (Kosmos 782). The program ended with Bion 11 in December 1996 and the U.S. participated in every one of them since Bion 3, completing more than one hundred life sciences experiments. Dozens of plant and animal species spent time in orbit during the program, including grasshoppers, guppies, Japanese quail, newts, rats, tortoises, and the first Soviet space monkeys.
Relations between the U.S. and USSR on Earth deteriorated in the late 1970s and the two superpowers nearly dropped the gloves in the 1980s. Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh discovered and named the asteroid 2228 Soyuz-Apollo in 1977. In 1978, the Soviet Union began crewed flights of its Interkosmos program, an effort to help socialist, pro-Soviet, and Warsaw Pact countries achieve spaceflight. 17 non-Soviet cosmonauts, including a few Western Europeans, flew onboard Soyuz missions to the Salyut 6, Salyut 7, and Mir space stations. The program sent the first Asian person, Pham Tuân of Vietnam, the first black and hispanic person, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez of Cuba, and the first citizen of a country other than U.S. or USSR, Vladimír Remek of Czechoslovakia, into space. NASA had its own equivalent and carried to orbit citizens of Western European countries, Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.
In 1984, President Ronald Regan announced Space Station Freedom, a collaboration between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (now the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) to be serviced by the Space Shuttle. At the same time, the Soviets were developing Mir-2. Neither got off the ground, at least not in their proposed iterations. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and financial straits faced by both projects opened an opportunity for cooperation. In 1993, the International Space Station program was announced as a joint venture between NASA and its Freedom partners and the Russian Space Agency.
Between 1994 and 1998, the Shuttle-Mir program prepared both nations for long-duration international space cooperation. To this day, American astronauts launch onboard the Russian Soyuz and Russian cosmonauts launch onboard the American Falcon 9/Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. Derivatives of the APAS-75 docking collar were used by the Space Shuttle to dock with Mir and the ISS and the contemporary Pressurized Mating Adapter connect the Russian Zarya and American Unity modules of the ISS.
As for the five spacemen, two made subsequent journeys into space following Apollo-Soyuz and as of September 2026, only one is still living. Tom Stafford assumed command of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California in November 1975 and initiated the development of the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile, and what would become the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Stafford retired from the Air Force with the rank of Lieutenant General in November 1979. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1980. In the 1990s, he served as an advisor for Space Station Freedom and the Shuttle–Mir program. Tom Stafford passed away on March 18, 2024 at the age of 93.
Deke Slayton served as the manager for the Approach and Landing Test flights, which evaluated and verified the Space Shuttle Orbiter’s airworthiness and approach and landing capability using Space Shuttle Enterprise from December 1975 to November 1977. Following the conclusion of the Approach and Landing Test program and until February 1982, he managed the Orbital Flight Training Program in preparation for the first four Space Shuttle missions and oversaw the Boeing 747/Space Shuttle Orbiter ferry program. Slayton retired from NASA on February 27, 1982, less than five weeks shy of 23 years with the agency. He was also the mission director for Conestoga 1, the world’s first successful privately-funded rocket launch, in September 1982, served on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (an advisory board within the FAA), and was the president of International Formula One Pylon Air Racing. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990. Deke Slayton passed away on June 13, 1993 at the age of 69.
Vance Brand commanded three Space Shuttle missions between 1982 and 1990, beginning with STS-5 Columbia, the first operational flight of the Space Shuttle program. Launched on November 11, 1982, STS-5 was the first four-person space crew in history and successfully deployed two commercial communications satellites from the Orbiter’s payload bay. That was followed by STS-41B Challenger in February 1984, during which two communications satellites were deployed (though failed to reach geosynchronous orbits due to upper-stage failures) and the first untethered extravehicular activity was performed using Manned Maneuvering Unit. Finally, STS-35 Columbia flew in December 1990 and was devoted to astronomical observations using ASTRO-1, a European Space Agency Spacelab module with four telescopes. Brand left the Astronaut Office in 1992 and held numerous leadership roles within NASA until his retirement in January 2008, including acting Associate Director for Programs at NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1996. As of September 2026, Brand is 95 years old.
Alexei Leonov served as chief of the cosmonaut corps from 1976 to 1982 and deputy director of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center until 1991. He was later the Vice President of Alfa Bank, the largest private commercial bank in Russia. A lifelong artist, Leonov passed away on October 11, 2019 at the age of 85.
Valery Kubasov flew in space one final time as commander of Soyuz 36 in 1980. The mission’s research cosmonaut was Bertalan Farkas, the first Hungarian citizen to fly in space, and the pair spent one week onboard the Salyut 6 space station. Kubasov passed away on February 19, 2014 at the age of 79. In 2001, all five members of Apollo-Soyuz were inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. Deke Slayton, Tom Stafford, and Vance Brand were inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, 1993, and 1997, respectively. Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov were inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1976.
In 1976, the following was written about Apollo-Soyuz: “History will be the ultimate judge of its success or failure, but it would appear that the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project has made a significant contribution to the strengthening of detente, and laid the foundation for possible future joint efforts between the United States and Soviet Union.” Fifty years later, the mission is undoubtedly cemented in history as having laid the groundwork for international cooperation in space and the way in which contemporary crewed space missions are trained for and carried out.
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[1] Blagonravov adopted the space dog Tsygan, who with Dezik, became the first dog to fly in space in July 1951. In 1960, Strelka and Belka became the first living creatures successfully recovered from orbital flight. One of Strelka's puppies, a little white furball named Pushinka (Russian for "Fluffy"), was gifted to the Kennedys by Premier Khrushchev.
[2] Echo 2 was a 135-foot (41-meter) diameter inflatable passive communications satellite that orbited from 1964 to 1969.
[3] Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev perished after their descent module depressurized prior to reentry.
[4] Both were to fly the ill-fated Soyuz 11 but were grounded due to concerns that Kubasov may have tuberculosis, which is contagious.
[5] Soyuz TM-34 carried the first South African, Mark Shuttleworth, into space.
[6] Apollo 14 command module pilot and former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of tree seeds to the moon in 1971.
Bibliography
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information about "Tenderness" from https://www.pakhmutova.ru/songs/tri_topo.shtml#%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C
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This post was written entirely without the use of AI (sorry HAL). Congratulations to the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, the Florida Panthers!
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