NavList:

This week is the fifieth anniversary of the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft, which makes it also the last flight of the sophisticated sextant built into the hull of the Apollo CM (Command Module). I doubt the sextant was used at all on this mission since it was entirely in Earth orbit under controlled conditions, but it was available and may have been tested. Other handheld sextants had been flown during Gemini missions and Skylab, but these were experiments with limited navigational value. The Apollo sextant was intended for navigation, coupled directly to the guidance computer. 

The "mission" was an early version of the "International Space Station" --a hint of things to come. The US Apollo spacecraft at one end, a Soviet Soyuz at the other end, and between them a "space station"... well... it was not much of a station, so they called it the "docking adapter". But it did have a couple of experiments inside so not entirely docking hardware. This was known as the "Apollo-Soyuz Test Project" and popularly in US media it was called the "Handshake in Space". Half a Century ago... this week.

Frank Reed

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