Science and society: The anniversary of the flight “Soyuz” – “Apollo”

July 15 marks the anniversary of the historic flight of the "Soyuz" - "Apollo". On this day 40 years ago, the spacecraft started, and the legendary "handshake in orbit" took place two days later. It was made the Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and the American NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford. The representative of the US Air Force made a special trip to Moscow to mark the anniversary of the flight, which went down in history of space exploration.

July 15 Alexey Leonov and Thomas Stafford met again. Celebrations were held at the Museum of Cosmonautics. Their participants were the heads of the Russian Space Agency Igor Komarov, the head of the diplomatic mission of the USA in Russia John Tefft.

All these decades, the astronauts kept the friendship, originated in orbit. They have met many times on Earth. The last time this happened six weeks ago at the Stafford Museum of Cosmonautics in his home state of Oklahoma.