15th July 1975: The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project lifted off

The American-Soviet détente that slowly emerged from the Cuban Missile Crisis had seen tensions between the two nations begin to thaw. By 1970, political negotiations had given way to technical co-operation and engineer exchanges between the two space agencies. Nevertheless, the two nations were highly critical of the others’ space technology. While the US was disapproving of the Soyuz reliance on automated components that could halt an entire mission if one failed, the USSR criticised the ‘extremely compl