An out of this world partnership of 50 years

In summer 1975, the Vietnam war came to and end, Jaws was just released as the big summer blockbuster and Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon. As Earth transformed and made history, two countries were busy changing the course of history in space.

On July 15, 1975, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would launch the final mission of the Apollo program: the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. A Cold War had loomed over the Earth for decades between the United States and then-Soviet Union. This mission with literally connect the two countries in the shared space outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

The United States had already successfully landed humans on the Moon first with the Apollo missions and to this day remain the only country to do so. Despite this, tensions between the two nations still existed.

“We thought they were pretty aggressive people and … they probably thought we were monsters. So we very quickly broke through that, because when you deal with people that are in the same line of work as you are, and you’re around them for a short time, why, you discover that, well, they’re human beings,” Astronaut Vance Brand said in an interview with CSPAN in 2000.

The language barrier was yet another divider of those on the mission. The astronauts had learned each other’s languages and after some time trying to communicate in their own, simply spoke each other’s language and translated in their own mind, according to NASA.

Ever since July 1975, the relationship between the United States and Russia (Soviet Union) has seen some sort of collaboration in space. It started first with Shuttle and the Russian-built Mir space station. In the 21st century it became the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS, a symbol of international cooperation to explore and push the frontier of what’s possible, has been continuously occupied since 2000 by both Americans and Russians.

To further that occupation, NASA’s Crew-11 mission will launch at the end of July.

As the longevity of the ISS wains, the 50 year anniversary of the start of a partnership in space that began with a handshake is a notable one. Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford and Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov shook hands shortly after the hatch was opened, marking and end to the race for domination of space.

The astronauts and cosmonauts of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton, Vance Brand, Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov have marked 50 years since a historic handshake that transformed the course of space exploration forever.