The first international partnership in space occurred on July 15, 1975. An Apollo spacecraft launched carrying a crew of three and docked two days later on July 17, with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and its crew of two. Designed to test the compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems and the possibility of an international space rescue, the nine-day Apollo-Soyuz mission brought together two former spaceflight rivals: the United States and the Soviet Union. During nearly two days of joint activities, the mission’s two Soviet cosmonauts and three U.S. astronauts carried out five joint experiments, including capturing images with the Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) telescope, which was built and calibrated by SSL. The EUV telescope established the field of EUV astronomy and paved the way for future UV observatories.
