Soyuz
commander Aleksei Leonov made these notes on his flight manual for
the historic link-up in space. Beside the printed instructions (in
Russian) for the docking maneuvers, he jotted a reminder of some English
words of welcome to Apollo commander Thomas Stafford.
This
is one of two Apollo-Soyuz commemorative plaques assembled in space
by the crews. Each crew carried two identical halves of the plaque
into orbit and exchanged one half to complete the memento.
A
gift from Apollo commander Thomas P. Stafford, a granite marker outside
the west end of the Museum commemorates the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
The trees behind the marker were planted by the Apollo-Soyuz crews
as a gesture of friendship. A similar grove was planted in Moscow.
These
Apollo command and service modules were test vehicles. The docking
module is back-up flight hardware designed and tested jointly by
NASA and Soviet engineers.
