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[b]Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of the Roscosmos State Corporation, congratulates NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the 45th anniversary of the Soyuz-Apollo mission[/b] Today is the 45th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that was the first of a kind experience of docking of two spacecraft in space, which were designed by different engineering schools, and development of the first ever international orbiting package. It is widely stated that spacecraft docked while passing Moscow and Soviet cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov shook hands with American astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton were over the Elbe River in Germany, where 30 years earlier the historical meeting of the allies who eradicated fascism took place. I deem it necessary to make a pointed reference to the fact that under the challenging Cold War conditions this in-orbit meeting in 1975 and collective scientific and engineering community activity of USSR and USA has signaled a thaw in relations and made it clear for our political leaders to enter a peaceful process of the cooperation development. The idea of international cooperation in the field of space has been around for ages. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky stated power and resource aggregation necessity in space exploration activities away back in the twenties of the past century. The leading Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Korolev wrote about this fact a year before Yuri Gagarin space mission, "One can hope that in the colossal and noble work of space exploration there will be an increasing expansion of international cooperation of scientists, who will be imbued with the idea of work in the interests of humanity, for the sake of peace and progress." Prophecies has come true and we may consider Soyuz-Apollo mission prosperous experience as a reference point for the International Space Station program, as well as for the future outer space exploration missions that could be seen only in the context of intense international cooperation, that aggregates resources, intelligence and ambitious determination of the pioneers.
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