Handshake on orbit - a little bit other

 In July, space enthusiasts could remember two notable events, one of which also had a special anniversary. This will now be discussed below, but not in the usual descriptive way, but through various memorabilia (most of which are part of my litthe collection).

This past July marked the 50th anniversary of the first joint space flight, the Soyuz-Apollo (or Apollo-Soyuz, officially abbreviated ASTP). The project was led by the two superpowers at the time, the Soviet Union and the United States. It was also the first multinational manned space mission, which later paved the way for further, more extensive international space activities. The commander of the American Apollo spacecraft was Thomas Stafford, his companions Vance Brand and Donald Slayton (aka "Deke"), who had not been able to spaceflight until then due to heart problems, and was instead the chief of the NASA astronauts. On the Soviet side, the mission was led by Alexei Leonov (picture 1, upside down), who had performed the first “spacewalk”, and he was assisted by Valery Kubasov (as is known, he later became Bertalan Farkas’s superior during their mission). The idea of ​​a joint space flight had been raised earlier, but due to tensions between the two countries (see e.g. Vietnamese war), it took a long time for the actual steps to be taken. Finally, the detente came, and an agreement was reached on the program. But it was a long journey and the participants still had a lot of work to do (just think of the technical or even linguistic differences). As a peak of the mission, the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft were connected and as a kind of symbolic moment, the two commanders held hands over the french town Metz on 17th July, 1975 (picture 3). The mission could be followed live on television by the onboard TV cameras (it is another matter that due to the telecommunications and political conditions at the time, many people could only see this - at best - afterwards). 

After some scientific experiments (e.g. observing stars in the ultraviolet range with the American SAG instrument, creating and observing an artificial solar eclipse from the Soyuz; an illustration of the latter can be seen here on page 37) and further symbolic moments, the crews of both spacecraft successfully returned to Earth (although it did not take long for tragedy to occur on Apollo). Unfortunately, the next Soviet-American spaceflight could not take place: on the one hand, because despite the rapprochement - and using the project to a certain extent - both sides continued to promote their own space technology (and political system) -, which strongly hindered further cooperation. On the other hand, by the time the continuation took place (the first Shuttle-Mir space flight, February 3, 1994), the Soviet Union was dissoluted. 

At the same time, ASTP did promote joint space work, as it led to the launch of the Soviet-led Intercosmos program, under which cosmonauts from “friendly countries” (e.g. Poland, Hungary, India, etc.) were able to work on the Salyut-6 and 7 space stations, and several guest astronauts were able to work on the Space Shuttle. 

The importance of the program is shown by the fact that numerous memorabilia have appeared from the 1970s to the present day, most of them of course in the participating countries. Below these are own pieces, let's see:

Image 5: a stamp block issued by the Hungarian Post in 1975, which is considered an almost trivial piece for domestic collectors.

Image 6: Soviet card calendar for 1979, produced in 1978 using a stamp issued in 1976 to commemorate the joint space flight.

Image 7: The above stamp block was issued in Mauritania, a northwestern African country, in 1976. With inscriptions in French and Arabic - the area was a French colony for a long time.

The picture above shows a block issued in a country that was also established in Africa and also in former French territory: the Central African Empire was a pro-French dictatorial state that existed for less than three years from the end of 1976 (it sounds ironic, but the state's demise was caused by a "friendly" intervention).

Image 9: we can see a series of stamps, also issued by the Hungarian Post Office (hopefully the series is complete, but if the Dear Reader knows of another piece, I would be happy to show it to you).

Finally, Image 10 shows a special badge made of a painted glass plate placed in a metal socket, which was produced in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

That's all I have in my collection on the subject at the moment, but I plan to acquire more pieces as my budget allow.

(I mentioned another, much better-known space event at the beginning of the post, but more on that another time...)