- Date
- 15–24 July 1975
- Mission
- Apollo–Soyuz
#USA#SSSR#Apollo#Sojuz#Space Race
Apollo–Soyuz closed the space race with a gesture of reconciliation: in July 1975, for the first time in history, the spacecraft of two rival superpowers joined together and their crews shook hands 220 kilometres above the Earth. Officially the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), it was the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft and, for six long years, the last American crewed flight too.
The idea of a joint flight matured during the détente between the USA and the USSR in the early 1970s. The agreement was signed in 1972 by President Nixon and Premier Kosygin. Technically it was a major challenge: the two craft used different atmospheres and incompatible docking systems. That is why a special docking module was built, with the androgynous APAS-75 mechanism that also served as a transfer airlock. For three years the crews trained together and learned each other's language.
Crew
COMMANDER (APOLLO)Tom StaffordCommander of the American Apollo. A veteran of Gemini and commander of Apollo 10; he was first to shake hands with Leonov at the meeting in space.
COMMAND MODULE PILOTVance BrandPilot of the Apollo command module. Apollo–Soyuz was his first spaceflight.
DOCKING MODULE PILOTDeke SlaytonOne of the "Mercury Seven"; after years grounded he finally reached space here, at 51, as docking module pilot.
COMMANDER (SOYUZ)Alexei LeonovCommander of the Soviet Soyuz 19. He achieved the first spacewalk back in 1965 aboard Voskhod 2.
FLIGHT ENGINEER (SOYUZ)Valeri KubasovFlight engineer of Soyuz 19. An aerospace engineer who had already tested welding in space in 1969.
Mission timeline
Select a phase to read what happened. Every chapter has its own detailed page.
Two launches in one day
The mission began on 15 July 1975 with two launches on two continents. At 12:20 UTC the Soviet Soyuz 19 lifted off from Baikonur with Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov. Seven and a half hours later, at 19:50 UTC, the American Apollo rose from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Saturn IB rocket, carrying Stafford, Brand and Slayton.
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The first international docking
After two days of closing in, on 17 July 1975 at 16:10 UTC the two spacecraft joined together internationally for the first time in history. The key was the androgynous APAS-75 docking system on the docking module — unlike earlier "male–female" couplings, both craft could use an identical, symmetrical mechanism.
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A handshake and joint work
About three hours after docking, at 19:19 UTC, Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov shook hands in the open hatch between the ships — the first handshake of two nations in space. Television carried it around the world as a symbolic end to the space race.
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Undocking and the journeys home
The ships undocked on 19 July. Soyuz 19, with Leonov and Kubasov, landed on 21 July on the Kazakh steppe. Apollo stayed in orbit a few more days and on 24 July splashed down in the Pacific near Hawaii — the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft in history.
Read the chapterMission in numbers
- Crew (USA)
- Stafford, Brand, Slayton
- Crew (USSR)
- Leonov, Kubasov
- Launch
- 15. 7. 1975
- Docking
- 17. 7. 1975
- Docked
- ~44 h
- Soyuz landing
- 21. 7. 1975
- Apollo landing
- 24. 7. 1975
- Launch vehicle (USA)
- Saturn IB
- Launch vehicle (USSR)
- Sojuz-U
Eyewitness account
“Soyuz and Apollo are shaking hands.”
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Apollo–Soyuz became a symbol that cooperation in space is possible despite deep political divides. The androgynous docking system the mission proved became the ancestor of the mechanisms of later stations. Direct cooperation fell quiet for two decades, but the spirit of the mission was revived in the 1990s by the Shuttle–Mir program and finally by the International Space Station (ISS), operated today jointly by the former rivals.
Facts
- It was the first international crewed docking of all — a symbolic end to the space race.
- The docking module served as an airlock: Apollo used pure oxygen at low pressure, Soyuz a nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere at higher pressure.
- Deke Slayton, one of the "Mercury Seven", first flew only at the age of 51 — the oldest person in space at that time.
- It was the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft and of the Saturn IB; the next American crewed flight came only six years later (STS-1, 1981).
- On return, toxic nitrogen tetroxide entered the Apollo cabin; Vance Brand briefly passed out, but the crew fully recovered.
- Leonov jokingly called Stafford's drawling Russian "Oklahomski".
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Related articles
Check yourself
Why would rival nations dock their spacecraft together?
Answer in your own words — everything you need is in the article above.
Sources & further reading
- NASA: The Apollo-Soyuz Mission — overview of the first joint Soviet–American flight.
- NSSDCA Master Catalog (NASA): Apollo-Soyuz Test Project — technical parameters and chronology.
- Spaceline: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Mission Fact Sheet — launch, docking and landing times.
- Wikipedia: Apollo–Soyuz — the starting structure of the article, CC-BY-SA.
Spaceflightpedia. (n.d.). Apollo–Soyuz. Retrieved 9 October 2026, from https://spaceflightpedia.com/article/apollo-sojuz
article text — CC-BY-SA · ◉ NASA photography — public domain · ✦ AI illustration — marked, generated from sources
