WASHINGTON, July 15 (RIA Novosti, Alexander Bratersky) - The participants of the first Soviet-American space flight, Soyuz Apollo, did not focus on politics, but tried to help each other manage space equipment, Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov said Friday in light of the 30th anniversary of Soviet-U.S. space cooperation.
"We worked brilliantly and one condition of this excellent work was that there should be no politics involved. The main thing for us was to set up a system of mutual assistance to each other, if some of us were in trouble," Leonov told Russian journalists in Washington.
The first Soviet-U.S. Soyuz Apollo flight was launched 30 years ago, beginning landmark cooperation between two countries locked in the Cold War.
In July 1975, the Soyuz-19 spaceship carrying cosmonauts Valery Kubasov and Alexei Leonov docked with the Apollo spacecraft, whose crew comprised astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald Slayton.
Stafford said that then, every space flight was sensational news, but now space missions are ordinary and people have grown accustomed to them. He added that the future of space research is the return to the Moon and a flight to Mars.
Another participant of the Soyuz Apollo docked flight said space still has many secrets despite progress in exploration.
Mars is a unique place, Brand said. Once people could not think of reaching the Moon, and now it might be the same with Mars, he said.
