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Space History Photo: Astronaut Gibson Shakes Hands with Cosmonaut Dezhurov

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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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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. government agency in charge of the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Founded in 1958, NASA is a civilian space agency aimed at exploring the universe with space telescopes,  satellites, robotic spacecraft, astronauts and more. The space agency has 10 major centers based across the U.S. and launches robotic and crewed missions from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida. It's astronaut corps is based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. To follow NASA's latest mission, follow the space agency on Twitter or any other social channel, of visit: nasa.gov.