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 4 Apollo 4 Apollo 4, (also known as AS-501), was the first unmanned test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which was used by the U.S. Apollo program to send the first astronauts to the Moon. The space vehicle was assembled in the Vertical Assembly Building, and was the first to be launched from Launch Complex 39 at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, facilities built specially for the Saturn V. Apollo 4 was an "all-up" test, meaning all rocket stages and spacecraft were fully functional on the initial flight, a first for NASA. It was