dscd4607.jpg

The sign accompanying the Soyuz trainer.

It reads

An Orbital Handshake

From Competition to Cooperation

This green sphere is the trainer used at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to prepare for the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the historic 1975 joint space mission between the United States and the Soviet Union. The trainer simulated a Soyuz Orbital Module, the portion of the Soyuz spacecraft used in orbit for any mission activities not relating to launch or reentry and was discarded before the Soyuz came back to Earth. It was used both vertically and horizontally by Soviet and American members of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) crew. When vertical, the model was used to prepare for joint operations, such as experiments, that took place in the Orbital Module. When laying horizontally, the crews practiced post-docking procedures, such as opening their respective hatches into the docking tunnel. Though the two nations were still considered antagonists, the crew members of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project learned each other's languages and spent hundreds of hours training together in preparation for the mission. The Apollo-Soyuz mission served as a step toward thawing Cold War tensions and paving the way for future cooperation.