Apollo–Soyuz Test Project made the Soviet Union's policy of détente official in his 1956 doctrine of peaceful coexistence at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the two nations seemed to be in perpetual conflict. Due to tense relations, space cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union was unlikely in the early 1970s. On June 7, 1971, the USSR had launched the first piloted orbital space station, Salyut 1. Meanwhile, the United States had launched the Apollo 14 mission several months prior, the third spacecraft to land humans on the moon. Each side gave the other little
Apollo 13 more immediate and visible warnings of anomalies. Because Apollo 13 followed the free-return trajectory, its altitude over the lunar far side was approximately greater than the orbital altitude on the remaining Apollo lunar missions. The Moon was almost at apogee during the mission (as it also was during the flights of Apollo 10 and Apollo 15), which also increased the distance from the Earth. The combination of the two effects ensures that Apollo 13 holds the absolute altitude record for a manned spacecraft, reaching a distance of from Earth on 7:21 pm EST, April 14, 1970. The A7L spacesuit intended