Apollo-Soyuz MFA Medallion with Flown Metal, with Certificate

Bilingual English/Russian award certificate issued by NASA’s Manned Flight Awareness (MFA) program — later renamed Spaceflight Awareness — to a contractor or agency employee in recognition of a contribution to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, July 15–24 1975, the first joint US–Soviet piloted spaceflight.

A 1½-inch aluminum medallion is mounted on the certificate’s ribbon; its reverse states that it contains metal flown aboard both the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft that docked during the mission. The practice of issuing MFA medallions began with Apollo 8 in 1969 and continued through the Space Shuttle era, ending with STS-114 in 2005 — fifteen in all, many, including this one, manufactured by the Barco Mint of New Orleans.

The certificate names the joint crew — Thomas Stafford, Donald “Deke” Slayton, and Vance Brand for the United States, and Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov for the Soviet Union — and carries the two official ASTP mission patches alongside an unofficial “Space Teams” cartoon insignia showing Snoopy riding the Apollo craft (“Right On!”) and a bear riding Soyuz (“Poyekhali!” — Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 launch cry, “Let’s go!”).