Exactly 40 years ago, on July 17, 1975, a historic handshake took place in orbit. On this day, Soyuz-19, with a crew of Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov, docked with the Apollo spacecraft, which was carrying Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald Slayton.
The plan to launch a joint Soviet-American manned mission began to be developed in 1970. After a positive reaction from the authorities, an agreement was signed on the experimental flight Apollo - Soyuz in May 1972 (since Soyuz - Apollo sounds much simpler, I will stick to it).
The main difficulty on the mission's path was the incompatibility of the Soviet and American atmosphere. No, we are not talking about the atmosphere of freedom, but about the composition of the atmospheres on spaceships. The Apollo atmosphere consisted of pure oxygen, its pressure was 0.35 of Earth's. The atmosphere of the Soyuz was similar in composition and pressure to that of Earth. So it was impossible to simply knock and open the hatch - it was necessary to create a sealed docking compartment that would act as a decompression chamber.
As a result, a similar compartment was built: it weighed two tons and had a length of three meters and went into space along with Apollo.
The spaceships themselves also underwent certain modifications and were equipped with specially designed new docking nodes.
During the work, engineers had a number of quite unexpected questions, like changing the composition of the material from which the suits of Soviet crews were made - because in oxygen atmosphere it became a fire hazard.
The flight was preceded by joint training of the American and Soviet crews in the USSR and the USA.
Besides, Soviet Union conducted several test flights of a modified version of the Soyuz intended for the mission.
Both ships launched on July 15, 1975. I went first "Soyuz-19".
Behind him "Apollo".
The docking of the ships in orbit occurred on July 17, 1975.
Soon after the historic handshake, Leonov stunned the Americans with a proposal, in accordance with the good Russian tradition, to drink vodka (from tubes). They struggled for a long time, but then agreed. In the end, it all turned out to be a hoax, because the tubes contained borscht. When the Americans learned this, they were upset.
During their flight into orbit, the astronauts received a call from President Harrison Ford.
The joint flight of the two ships lasted 44 hours. On July 19, the spacecraft undocked, and Apollo was used in an experiment to create an artificial solar eclipse: it obscured the Sun, allowing the Soyuz crew to observe the solar corona.
After two orbits, another docking was made in order to better test the technology - but without the transfer of crews from ship to ship. After two more orbits, Soyuz and Apollo undocked for the last time.
Soyuz 19 landed on July 21, 1975. Apollo landed three days later on July 24, 1975. It really almost ended in tragedy. Due to an error by the crew, poisonous vapors of tetrakoskid dinitrogen, which was used as fuel in the ship's orientation system, began to be sucked into the capsule. On top of that, the capsule overturned during splashdown. After inhaling the fumes, Vance Brand lost consciousness, but the situation was saved by commander Thomas Stafford, who promptly pulled oxygen masks on everyone. As a result, the astronauts spent the next two weeks after landing in a hospital in Honolulu.
Soyuz-Apollo was the last mission to use the Apollo spacecraft. Shortly after the completion of the flight, the conversion of NASA infrastructure for future reusable spacecraft began. However, due to a number of delays and increasing costs of the program, the shuttles first went into space in 1981 - so the Americans did not fly into space for almost 6 years.
It is also interesting that Donald Slayton, for whom Soyuz-Apollo was the first and last flight into space, was one of the seven members of the very first American astronaut corps (the so-called Mercurian Seven) recruited back in 1959. Thus, it took him 16 years to finally go into space.
Apollo Soyuz model at the Smithsonian Museum
The Soyuz-Apollo flight is considered the informal end of the classical space race between the USSR and the USA. True, there were also Star Wars ahead and a rather pointless attempt to create our own reusable Soviet system as a response to the shuttle. The next joint manned missions took place only in the 1990s as part of the Mir - Shuttle program.
Experimental flight Apollo - Soyuz (abbr. ASTP; the more common name is the Soyuz - Apollo program; English Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP)), also known as Handshake in Space - a joint experimental program flight of the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz-19 and the American spacecraft Apollo.
Contacts between Soviet and American scientists began with the launches of the first Soviet artificial satellites Earth. The first agreement on cooperation in the field of peaceful space exploration between the USSR Academy of Sciences and NASA was signed in June 1962. Then a wide exchange of opinions and mutual acquaintance with the results of space experiments began.
The initiators of the discussion on the possibility of cooperation between the USSR and the USA in the field of manned flights were the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (AS) Academician M.V. Keldysh and the Director of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Dr. Payne.
In October 1970, the first meeting of specialists from the USSR and the USA took place in Moscow. The delegations were headed by: the American delegation, the director of the Johnson Manned Flight Center, Dr. R. Gilruth; the Soviet delegation, the chairman of the Council for International Cooperation in the Study and Use of Outer Space “Intercosmos” at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician B. N. Petrov. Working groups were formed to coordinate technical requirements to ensure compatibility between Soviet and American ships.
In 1971, first in June in Houston, then in November in Moscow, meetings were held between specialists from the USSR Academy of Sciences and the US NASA (leaders B.N. Petrov and R. Gilrut). Considered technical requirements to spacecraft systems, the fundamental principles have been agreed upon technical solutions and basic provisions for ensuring compatibility of systems, as well as the possibility of carrying out manned flights on existing spacecraft in the mid-70s in order to test the rendezvous and docking means being created.
In 1972, the American delegation, led by the then acting director of NASA, Dr. J. Low, and the Soviet delegation, led by the acting president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician V. A. Kotelnikov, analyzed the work done over the past period. The final document concluded that an experimental flight using existing spacecraft: the Soviet Soyuz-class and the American Apollo-class was technically feasible and desirable.
1972, May. A government agreement was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States of America on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes, which provided for work on the Soyuz-Apollo project. The directors of the project were: from the Soviet side - corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences K. D. Bushuev, from the American side - Dr. G. Lanni.
The main goals of the program were:
Testing of elements of a compatible in-orbit rendezvous system;
testing of active-passive docking units;
checking technology and equipment to ensure the transition of astronauts from ship to ship;
accumulation of experience in conducting joint flights of spacecraft of the USSR and the USA.
In addition, the program involved studying the possibility of controlling the orientation of docked ships, testing inter-ship communications and coordinating the actions of the Soviet and American flight control centers.
On May 24, 1975, the final meeting of specialists from the USSR Academy of Sciences and NASA took place in Moscow. The final document on readiness for the flight was signed by: from the Soviet side - Academician V. A. Kotelnikov, from the American side - Dr. J. Low. The launch date for the Soyuz 19 and Apollo spacecraft was approved as July 15, 1975.
On July 15, 1975, at 15:20, Soyuz-19 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
At 22:50, Apollo was launched from the Cape Canaveral launch site (using a Saturn 1B launch vehicle);
On July 17, at 19:12, the Soyuz and Apollo docked;
On July 19, the ships were undocking, after which, after two orbits of the Soyuz, the ships were re-docking, and after two more orbits the ships were finally undocked.
Flight time:
“Soyuz-19” - 5 days 22 hours 31 minutes;
“Apollo” - 9 days 1 hour 28 minutes;
The total flight time in the docked state is 46 hours 36 minutes.
American:
o Thomas Stafford - commander, 4th flight;
o Vance Brand - command module pilot, 1st flight;
o Donald Slayton - docking module pilot, 1st flight;
Soviet:
o Alexey Leonov - commander, 2nd flight;
o Valery Kubasov - flight engineer, 2nd flight.
During the joint flight, several scientific and technical experiments were carried out:
Artificial solar eclipse- study from the Soyuz of the solar corona during the eclipse of the Sun by Apollo;
Ultraviolet absorption - measurement of the concentration of atomic nitrogen and oxygen in space;
Zone-forming fungi - study of the influence of weightlessness, overload and cosmic radiation on basic biological rhythms;
Microbial exchange - study of the exchange of microorganisms during space flight between crew members;
Universal furnace - study of the influence of weightlessness on some crystal chemical and metallurgical processes in semiconductor and metal materials. One of the participants in the study of the influence of weightlessness on the processes of solid-liquid phase interaction of metals was K. P. Gurov.
On Apollo, people breathed pure oxygen under reduced pressure (?0.35 atmospheric pressure), and on Soyuz, an atmosphere similar to Earth’s in composition and pressure was maintained. For this reason, direct transfer from ship to ship is impossible. To solve this problem, a transfer compartment-airlock was specially developed and launched with Apollo. To create the transition compartment, developments from the lunar module were used, in particular, the same docking unit was used to connect to the ship. Slayton's role was called "transition compartment pilot." Also, the atmospheric pressure in Apollo was raised slightly, and in Soyuz it was reduced to 530 mm Hg. Art., increasing the oxygen content to 40%. As a result, the duration of the desaturation process during sluicing was reduced from 8 hours to 30 minutes.
Used sources:
1. Soyuz - Apollo - Wikipedia [Electronic resource]. – 2012. – Access mode: http://ru.wikipedia.org.
2. RSC ENERGY - EPAS PROGRAM [Electronic resource]. – 2012. – Access mode: http://www.energia.ru.
3. Handshake in orbit. To the 35th anniversary of the international space flight according to the ASTP program [Electronic resource]. – 2012. – Access mode:
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Books
- "Soyuz" and "Apollo". Soviet scientists, engineers and cosmonauts - participants in joint work with American specialists - tell. This book is about how the preparation and implementation of the joint flight of the spacecraft - Soyuz and Apollo - took place. Its authors are those who, together with American specialists, prepared this unique...
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Experimental flight "Apollo" - "Soyuz" (abbr. ASTP; more common name - the Soyuz program - "Apollo"; English Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP)), also known as Handshake in Space - a joint experimental program flight of the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz-19 and the American spacecraft Apollo.
The program was approved on May 24, 1972 by the Agreement between the USSR and the USA on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes.
Director of the Soyuz-Apollo Project Center accompanies the Russian delegation
The main goals of the program were:
testing elements of a compatible in-orbit rendezvous system;
Dick and Vance training in a pressure chamber
While studying in Houston
testing of active-passive docking units;
Thomas Stafford on a Soviet simulator
checking technology and equipment to ensure the transition of astronauts from ship to ship;
During training at the Soviet space center
accumulation of experience in conducting joint flights of spacecraft of the USSR and the USA.
From left to right: astronauts Donald Slayton K., D. Vance Brand and Thomas Stafford P., cosmonauts Valery Kubasov and Alexey Leonov
Press conference
Nixon looks at the Apollo command module after the briefing
In addition, the program involved studying the possibility of controlling the orientation of docked ships, testing inter-ship communications and coordinating the actions of the Soviet and American mission control centers.
Crews
American:
Thomas Stafford - commander, 4th flight;
Vance Brand - command module pilot, 1st flight;
Donald Slayton - docking module pilot, 1st flight;
Soviet:
Alexey Leonov and Valery Kubasov, Soyuz-19 crew
Alexey Leonov - commander, 2nd flight;
Valery Kubasov - flight engineer, 2nd flight.
Chronology of events
On July 15, 1975, at 15:20, Soyuz-19 was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome;
At 22:50, Apollo was launched from the Cape Canaveral launch site (using the Saturn 1B launch vehicle);
Launch vehicle "Saturn-1B" on the launcher
The Apollo crew poses near Saturn 1B on the site the day before launch
The day before the start
Before the start
Start
On July 17, at 19:12, the Soyuz and Apollo docked;
Apollo docking
Historical handshake
On July 19, the ships were undocking, after which, after two orbits of the Soyuz, the ships were re-docking, and after two more orbits the ships were finally undocked.
During a shared flight
Atmosphere on ships
At Apollo, people breathed pure oxygen under reduced pressure (≈0.35 atmospheric pressure), and at Soyuz, an atmosphere similar to the earth’s in composition and pressure was maintained. For this reason, direct transfer from ship to ship is impossible. To solve this problem, a transition compartment-gateway was specially developed and launched together with Apollo. To create the transition compartment, developments from the lunar module were used, in particular, the same docking unit was used to connect to the ship. Slayton's role was called "transition compartment pilot." Also, the atmospheric pressure in Apollo was slightly increased, and in Soyuz it was reduced to 530 mm Hg. Art., increasing the oxygen content to 40%. As a result, the duration of the desaturation process during sluicing was reduced from 8 hours to 30 minutes.
President Gerald Ford speaks to members of the American crew live
Flight time:
“Soyuz-19” - 5 days 22 hours 31 minutes;
"Apollo" - 9 days 1 hour 28 minutes;
Mission control center during the joint Soviet-American expedition
The total flight time when docked is 46 hours 36 minutes.
Apollo splashdown
The Apollo command module descends onto the deck of the USS New Orleans after splashdown in Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii
Memory
For the day of spacecraft docking, the Novaya Zarya factory and the Revlon enterprise (Bronx) each produced one batch of Epas perfume (“Experimental Flight Apollo - Soyuz”), each with a volume of 100 thousand bottles. The packaging of the perfume was American, the contents of the bottle were Russian, with some French components used. Both batches were instantly sold out.
Omega watches released for this event
In the Soviet Union in 1975, Soyuz-Apollo cigarettes were produced jointly with the USA, which were very popular thanks to high quality tobacco and have been on sale for several years.
Model of Soyuz-19 in Star City
Patch on the spacesuits of expedition members
Without a signature
Konstantin Bogdanov, for RIA Novosti.
On July 15, 1975, with an interval of several hours, two spacecraft launched into space: the Soviet Soyuz-19 and the American ASTP Apollo. ASTP began - the Soyuz-Apollo experimental flight, the first international initiative in the field of manned space exploration.
Tired of the race
The 1970s marched across the planet, “ Golden autumn"The Western world, burdened by economic and energy crises, leftist terror, and sometimes a very harsh reaction to the turbulent and capricious 60s. After the extinguishment of the Cuban crisis and the end of the war in Vietnam, “détente of international tension” came into force: the Soviet Union and the United States, step by step, brought closer their positions on limiting offensive weapons. The Helsinki Agreement on Security and Cooperation in Europe was being prepared. In such conditions, it was impossible to overestimate the political significance of the joint flight into orbit of Soviet and American spacecraft - after a tense race of priorities of the previous decade. Having rather painfully slapped each other on the nose (with a final score of 1:1 - we got a satellite and the first manned flight, the Americans were the first to explore the Moon), having lost a total of eight people and squandered a lot of money that almost no one counted, the superpowers calmed down a bit, and were ready to “collaborate” (even if only on camera).
The background of the project can be traced back to the early 1960s. In 1963, John Kennedy, either jokingly or seriously, proposed to Khrushchev the idea of a joint Soviet-American lunar expedition. Nikita Sergeevich, inspired by the successes of Sergei Korolev’s design bureau, refused, maintaining the brand of the Soviet empire, which should “bury” America.
The second time they started talking about joint programs was in 1970. Just miraculously returned from lunar orbit, crippled by the Apollo 13 explosion. One of the declared topics of the joint program was the development of international operations to rescue damaged ships. The declaration, frankly speaking, is purely political: the situation in orbit usually develops so quickly that it is almost impossible to prepare and send a rescue expedition into space on time, even with full engineering and technical compatibility.
In May 1972, the joint flight program with docking in orbit was finally approved. Especially for this flight, a universal docking port was developed - petal or, as it is also called, “androgynous”. (The second name is associated with the classic engineering jargon in distinguishing the active and passive parts of the connection - “male” for the central pin and “female” for the receiving cone.) The spade connection was the same for both mating ones, which made it possible not to think about compatibility in emergency situation. In addition, in the conditions of this political framework, no one wanted to avoid obscenities on the topic of who would be “dad” and who would be “mom.” Subsequently, androgynous knots took root in space; they were developed for Buran in 1989 and used during shuttle dockings to the Mir station in 1994-98. The ISS docking port for the shuttles is also made androgynous. Apparently, this is the most visible legacy of the Soyuz-Apollo program.
The crew and the incident with stamps
The commander of the Soyuz-19 crew was Alexei Leonov, perhaps the most famous Russian cosmonaut in the world after Yuri Gagarin, the man who first stepped into space. open space. Leonov was unlucky in some ways: after his triumphant flight in 1965, he became the head of the group Soviet cosmonauts preparing to go to the Moon. But the Zond program lagged behind the successes of the American Apollo, the reliability of the technology remained low, and Vasily Mishin, who replaced the late Sergei Korolev, played it safe and did not agree to a manned flight around the Moon. As a result, Frank Borman was the first to succeed on Apollo 8, and then problems began with the monstrous brainchild of the Russian cosmonautics - the N-1 heavy lunar rocket. Leonov never visited space during all this time. Leonov's partner as a flight engineer was Valery Kubasov, a member of the crew of the Soyuz-6 expedition, which for the first time carried out a unique experiment on welding in the vacuum of space.
Tom Stafford, the commander of Apollo 10, the second manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon, was chosen as the head of the American expedition. The tenth Apollo mission is mostly remembered as a dress rehearsal for Neil Armstrong's flight. Stafford and Eugene Cernan (the future commander of Apollo 17, the last manned lunar expedition of planet Earth to date) undocked the lunar module and approached the surface of the night star. But in the end, Stafford never made it to the Moon itself.
Initially, Stafford was supposed to be accompanied as a command module pilot by John Swigert, one of the heroes of the Apollo 13 disaster epic. However, he got into a very unpleasant story, better known as the “Apollo 15 stamp scandal.” As it turns out, the crew of Apollo 15 illegally smuggled 398 envelopes with postage stamps commemorating the flight to the Moon and back, with the goal of profiting from their resale upon return. Swigert did not fly on the fifteenth Apollo, nor was he among the shareholders of this illegal business, but he was aware of what was happening in the astronaut corps. During the official investigation, he refused to testify in a rather harsh manner. According to the results of the investigation, in addition to the main culprits, Swigert also suffered a rebound: instead of him, the newcomer Vance Brand, who had not flown in space before, was included in the crew of the future Soviet-American expedition.
The third person assigned to Stafford and Brand was Donald Slayton, NASA's deputy director for crewing. This man's story is dramatic. He is the only one of the first seven American astronauts (the same “Original Seven”) who has never been in space: either at the last moment the third suborbital flight “Mercury-Redstone” was canceled, or only later, during the preparation of the planned flight into orbit, health difficulties arose. Finally, Slayton’s time has come, and he was entrusted with an important role - the pilot of the docking module.
Barely breathing
A major problem when docking ships was the issue of the general atmosphere. Apollo was designed for an atmosphere of pure oxygen at low pressure (280 mm Hg), while Soviet ships flew with an onboard atmosphere similar in composition and pressure to that of Earth. To solve this problem, an additional compartment was attached to the Apollo, in which, after docking, the atmospheric parameters approached the Soviet ones. In Soyuz, for the sake of such a case, they lowered the pressure to 520 mmHg. At the same time, the Apollo command module with the one astronaut remaining there was sealed.
On July 17 at 16:12 GMT, the ships successfully connected in orbit. Minutes dragged on for the atmosphere to equalize. Finally, the hatch was cleared, and Leonov and Stafford shook hands through the airlock tunnel, apparently ignoring the Russian sign “you don’t say hello across the threshold,” which is not valid in space.
The docked ships remained in orbit for almost two days. The crews got acquainted with the equipment of their comrades, conducted scientific experiments and paid quite a lot of attention to television broadcasts to Earth. There were also traditional tricks. In front of the television cameras, Alexey Leonov, with a very serious look, handed the Americans tubes, which, judging by the inscriptions, contained vodka, and persuaded his colleagues to drink, although they were “not supposed to.” Naturally, the tubes contained not vodka, but ordinary borscht, and the famous joker Leonov had pasted the labels in advance.
Undocking followed, and then Soyuz-19, after two orbits, reconnected with Apollo, practicing the use of the docking port. Here the Americans played the active side, and Slayton, who was steering the engines, accidentally gave a strong impulse, overloading the extended and already latched shock absorbers of the Soyuz. The multiple safety factor of the docking unit rods saved the day.
The “political flight” ended relatively successfully, despite the difficulties that arose. The Soyuz went back to Earth, and Apollo remained in orbit for more than three days, and only then splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. During landing, the American crew confused the sequence of switching procedures, as a result of which toxic fuel exhaust began to be sucked into the cabin. Stafford managed to get oxygen masks and put them on for himself and his unconscious comrades, and the efficiency of the rescue services also helped. However, the risk was enormous: according to doctors, the astronauts “grabbed” 75% of the lethal dose.
This is the history of joint space programs took a break. Afghanistan shone ahead, " star Wars"and the last hysterical paroxysm cold war. Joint manned flights with dockings will resume only twenty years later, with the Mir-Shuttle program and the International Space Station project.
But the phrase “Soyuz-Apollo” is firmly etched in my memory. For some, it is the beginning of open and honest international cooperation in space, for others, it is an example of expensive window dressing on a planetary scale, and for others, in connection with it, only the neighboring tobacco shop is remembered.
