The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: An Orbital Partnership Is Born

On July 17, 1975, something momentous happened: two Cold War-rivals met in space. When their respective spacecraft rendezvoused and docked, a new era of cooperative ventures in space began.

For more than a decade, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have been regularly living and working together in Earth orbit, first in the Shuttle-Mir program, and now on the International Space Station. But, before the two Cold War-rivals first met in orbit in 1975, such a partnership seemed unlikely. Since Sputnik bleeped into orbit in 1957, there had been a Space Race, with the U.S. and then-Soviet Union driven more by competition than cooperation. When President Kennedy called for a manned moon landing in 1961, he spoke of "battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny" and referred to the "head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines."

But by the mid-70s things had changed. The U.S. had "won" the race to the moon, with six Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972. Both nations had launched space stations, the Russian Salyut and American Skylab. With the space shuttle still a few years off and the diplomatic chill thawing, the time was right for a joint mission.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project would send NASA astronauts Tom Stafford, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton and Vance Brand in an Apollo Command and Service Module to meet Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov in a Soyuz capsule. A jointly designed, U.S.-built docking module fulfilled the main technical goal of the mission, demonstrating that two dissimilar craft could dock in orbit. But the human side of the mission went far beyond that.

Image Credit: NASA

Ten Technologies: A Brief Look at Military Evolution — Radio Equipment

By Carla Voorhees,
Defense Media Activity

This is the second in a series of 10 technologies integral to the United States military since World War I.

In the early twentieth century, radio was considered a wonder – it allowed long distance communication without wires, known as “wireless telegraphy.” Morse code was transmitted via electromagnetic waves without the need to lay miles of wires. Although there were drawbacks to the initial technology, such as interference and a lack of security, the technology evolved into the radio we know today.

The Army Signal Corps is the best-known military developer of radio technology. A list of equipment used by the Army Signal Corps can be seen here.

During World War II, radio technology evolved from simply a wireless communications tool to a hybrid approach including teletype and telephone equipment. The Army-Navy Transportable Radio Communications system (AN/TRC) was a game-changer. It could be installed much faster and with fewer personnel than traditional wire-based systems and was small enough to fit into a truck and a trailer. AN/TRC could also transmit facsimile (fax) transmissions of text, pictures, and drawings.

Additionally, during WWII, a radio technology offshoot – RADAR (essentially a tiny Doppler radio) became a critical component in the development of the proximity fuse. This allowed shells equipped with RADAR to sense the target and detonate over the target, rather than on impact, improving the accuracy of artillery fire.

Radio continued to play an integral part throughout WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War, and does so to this day.