President Ford and Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin with the Apollo-Soyuz Crews

In spite of Cold War tension, both the United States and the Soviet Union expressed interest in joint space exploration. In 1972, the two countries signed an Agreement of Cooperation.

In July 1975, the first joint Soviet-American spacecraft docking took place. American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts docked their spacecraft in orbit above the earth, as people around the world watched on television. Later that day, the crews of both spacecraft talked with President Gerald Ford on the phone and listened to a message from Soviet Leonid Brezhnev.

Prior to the mission, the U.S. and Soviet space programs conducted numerous tests and simulations. U.S. and Soviet space crews and supporting engineers visited each other’s facilities and trained together. The U.S. astronauts took Russian language courses; the Soviets took English courses. Both teams agreed that in space, the Americans would speak to their Soviet counterparts in Russian, who in turn would speak English to the Americans.

Midway through their first intensive training session, the men visited Washington, D.C. while en route to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for joint flight crew training. This photograph shows the presentation of a model of the Apollo-Soyuz spacecrafts to President Ford in the Cabinet Room at the White House on September 7, 1974, alongside Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts. Shown, from left to right, are: Vladimir A. Shatalov, Commander of Cosmonaut training; Valeriy N. Kubasov, ASTP Soviet engineer; Aleksey A. Leonov, ASTP Soviet crew commander; Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S.; President Gerald R. Ford; Thomas P. Stafford, ASTP American crew commander; and Donald K. Slayton, American crew's docking module. Commemorative pins from the mission can be seen on their suits.

Both superpowers saw this spaceflight as more than scientific progress, and the beginning of the end of the space race. The unique mission combined diplomacy and science, demonstrated that U.S.-Soviet cooperation was possible, and laid the foundation for the current International Space Station.