Russian-U.S. cooperation on the International Space Station program was practically launched thirty years ago

Thursday, June 30, 2022

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Russian-U.S. cooperation on the International Space Station program was practically launched thirty years ago, when the Soyuz and Apollo spacecrafts blasted off from Baikonur and Cape Canaveral on July 15, 1975, Russian space specialists said on Thursday. “In the wake of the Cold War we were the first Russians allowed to work at Cape Canaveral on the Apollo craft,” Nikolai Zelenshikov, deputy general designer at the Energia space corporation, told reporters on Thursday. He said a special group of specialists had been set up to check the electromagnetic compatibility of the spacecraft. Another group was studying different emergency situations both on board the Soyuz and the Apollo. A Russian-English dictionary of space terms was published, helping Soviet cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov and American astronauts Thomas Stafford, Donald Slayton and Vance Brand find common language both on Earth and in space. “When I was offered to head the crew which was to dock with the Apollo, I could hardly count to ten in English,” Alexei Leonov said. However, there was no language barrier during the joint flight, as by that time the cosmonauts and astronauts had learned the basics of each other’s language. “Vans’s Russian was the best, but Stafford was the most sociable, using not only words, but also mimicry and gestures,” Leonov said. According to him, the flight had two main tasks. “We were to show the world that Russians and Americans can work together, and what is most important - they can create a common rescue system so that any spacecraft could be rescued in space,” he emphasized. The history-making flight of the docked spacecraft lasted slightly more than 46 hours, but according to the head of the Russian Roskosmos aviation and space authority, Anatoly Perminov, it has become “the prototype of future international stations”. An even more large-scale international project – expedition to Mars, is currently on the agenda, he said. “I believe the experience accumulated in the implementation of international space projects, including the Soyuz-Apollo project, is a good basis for that,” Perminov emphasized.

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