NASA STUDY SUMMARY- "International Rendezvous and Docking Mission"
Here's one of the early ideas that became the ASTP-- Apollo Soyuz Test Project in the mid-70's-- the so-called "handshake in space". As this study shows, originally the idea was to link up with a Soviet Salyut space station for a couple days of friendly 'joint operations' and then depart for the remainder of the two week mission in orbit, conducting a resource study of the United States using mission sensors installed in the CSM's SIM bay and on the docking module used to mate the Apollo to the Soviet hardware.
In the end, the Salyut was left out-- the Soyuz docked at one end of the DM, and the Apollo docked to the other end.
Here's the brief summary on the mission outline and the main graphic from the study...
Later! OL JR
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