Space History Photo: Astronaut Gibson Shakes Hands with Cosmonaut Dezhurov

By NASA Archives
published

space history, nasa, apollo-soyuz, mir
Astronaut Robert Gibson of STS-71 shakes hands with Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov of Mir-18 in June of 1995. (Image credit: NASA.)

In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, Astronaut Robert L. Gibson, STS-71 mission commander, shakes the hand of cosmonaut Vladimir N. Dezhurov, Mir-18 commander. The historic handshake took place on June 29, 1995, two and a half weeks prior to the 20th anniversary of a similar in-space greeting between cosmonauts and astronauts participating in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP).

On July 17, 1975, astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, NASA's ASTP commander, greeted his counterpart, Aleksey A. Leonov, in a docking tunnel linking the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft.

Each weekday, SPACE.com looks back at the history of spaceflight through photos (archive).

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NASA Archives
NASA Archives
U.S. Space Agency

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