Apollo Launch (Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) Poster

The Apollo Soyuz Test Project Saturn IB launch vehicle thundered away from KSC's Launch Complex 39B on July 15, 1975, at 3:50 p.m. Aboard the Apollo Command Module were ASTP Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald Slayton. The astronauts will rendezvous and dock with a Soyuz spacecraft, launched earlier that morning from the Baikonur launch facility in the Soviet Union, carrying Soviet cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valerly Kubasov. Primary Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission objectives were to evaluate the docking and undocking of an Apollo spacecraft with a Soyuz, and determine the adequacy of the onboard orientation lights and docking target; evaluate the ability of astronauts and cosmonauts to make inter-vehicular crew transfers and the ability of spacecraft systems to support the transfers: evaluate the Apollo's capability of maintaining attitude-hold control of the docked vehicles and performing attitude manoeuvres; measure quantitatively the effect of weightlessness on the crews' height and lower limb volume, according to length of exposure to zero-g; and obtain relay and direct synchronous-satellite navigation tracking data to determine their accuracy for application to Space Shuttle navigation-system design. The objectives were successfully completed, and the mission was adjudged successful on August 15, 1975.