| Astronauts | Saturn 1-B | Missions | Patches | History |
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Astronauts
Apollo Crew
Vance D. Brand |
Donald K. Slayton |
Thomas P. Stafford
Soyuz Crew
Valeri Kubasov |
Alexei Leonov
Vance D. Brand Brand received a Bachelor of Science degree in business from the University of Colorado in 1953. He then served in the United States Marine Corps (USMC),
first as an infantry officer, and then, from 1955, as an aviator. He was separated from the USMC in 1957, but continued to serve in United States Marine Corps
Reserve and Air National Guard jet fighter squadrons until 1964, reaching the rank of major.
He returned to the University of Colorado, where he earned a second
Bachelor of Science degree, this time in aeronautical engineering, in 1960, and joined Lockheed Corporation as a flight test engineer. Lockheed sent him to the
United States Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland, where he qualified as a test pilot with Class 33 in February 1963. He earned a Master of Business
Administration (MBA) degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1964.
Brand was backup command module pilot for Apollo 15, backup commander for Skylab 3
and Skylab 4, and commander of the unflown Skylab Rescue mission. In July 1975, he flew in space for the first time as command module pilot of the Apollo-Soyuz
Test Project, the first joint US/Soviet Union space mission. Later he commanded STS-5 in the Space Shuttle Columbia in November 1982, STS-41-B in the Space
Shuttle Challenger in February 1984, and STS-35 in the Space Shuttle Columbia in December 1990.
He left the Astronaut Office in 1992 to become Chief of Plans
at the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) Joint Program Office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. In September 1994, he became the Assistant Chief
of Flight Operations at the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he subsequently became Acting Chief Engineer, Deputy Director for Aerospace Projects, and
finally Acting Associate Center Director for Programs. He retired from NASA in January 2008.
Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton Slayton joined the US Army Air Corps in 1942, and flew combat missions over Europe and the Pacific during World War II. He joined the
Minnesota Air National Guard in 1951, and the USAF in 1952. Before Slayton could make his Mercury flight, he was diagnosed with an erratic heart
rhythm (idiopathic atrial fibrillation), and grounded by NASA and the Air Force.
He resigned from the USAF in 1963 with the rank of Major, but stayed
with the space program, first as unofficial Chief of the Astronaut Office, then as Director of Flight Crew Operations. In July 1970, he was returned to flight
status, and flew on the last Apollo spacecraft in July 1975 as docking module pilot on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight. He left NASA in 1982.
Thomas P. Stafford Stafford graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland with the Class of 1952, and joined the
USAF. He graduated from the USAF Experimental Test Pilot School with Class 58-C. He made his first spaceflight in December 1965 as the pilot of Gemini
6A, which made the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7. In June of the following year he commanded Gemini 9A.
In 1969, Stafford was the Commander
of Apollo 10, the second crewed mission to orbit the Moon and the first to fly a Lunar Module in lunar orbit, descending to an altitude of 9 miles (14 km) above
its surface. On the return to Earth, the Apollo 10 spacecraft achieved a speed of 24,791 miles per hour (39,897 km/h), setting the record for the fastest
speed achieved by human beings.
In 1975, Stafford was the commander of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight, the first joint U.S.-Soviet space mission.
He was a brigadier general at the time of the mission, becoming the first general officer to fly in space, as well as the first member of his Naval Academy
class to pin on the first, second, and third stars of a general officer.
Valeri N. Kubasov Valery Nikolaevich Kubasov was a Soviet/Russian cosmonaut who flew on two missions in the Soyuz program as a flight engineer: Soyuz 6 and
Soyuz 19 (the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project mission), and commanded Soyuz 36 in the Intercosmos program. On July 21st 1975, the Soyuz 7K-TM module
used for ASTP landed in Kazakhstan at 5:51 p.m. and Kubasov was the first to exit the craft. Kubasov performed the first welding experiments in space,
along with Georgy Shonin.
The July 1975, Apollo–Soyuz Test Project became Kubasov's second space mission and he was a flight engineer on it. Kubasov spent several hours
in the Apollo command and docking modules. During this project Kubasov told the U.S. President Gerald Ford in a TV linkup, that they
got "good space food... some juice, some coffee and a lot of water".
Status: Alive
Born: May 9, 1931
Died:
Flights: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Status: Deceased
Born: March 1, 1924
Died: June 13, 1993
Flights: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Status: Alive
Born: September 17, 1930
Died:
Flights: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Status: Deceased
Born: January 7, 1935
Died: February 19, 2014
Flights: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
