From Pearce Wright in Houston and Edmund Stevens in Moscow. July 17

Brigadier-General Thomas Stafford and his fellow-astronaut, Mr Donald K. Slayton, tonight shook hands jubilantly with the Soviet cosmonauts in their Soyuz spacecraft 140 miles above the Earth.

The meeting set the seal on the brilliantly carried-out rendezvous in space of the Soyuz, which left Baikonur 1,800 miles east of Moscow, early on Tuesday morning and the American Apollo, launched in Florida 7½ hours later.

The docking of the two craft was made at 4.09 pm GMT over the Atlantic off Portugal with such remarkable precision and smoothness that the operation was completed six minutes before schedule.

“Captured I” exclaimed Colonel Alexci Leonov, the Soyuz commander, and the two ships were linked together.

In Moscow there was such an outburst of genuine emotion that American tourists were given bear-bugs on the street in scenes reminiscent of the wartime meeting on the Elbe between Soviet and American soldiers. Champagne corks were popping all over the capital, toasts to friendship with the United States were the order of the night and the ancient city of Samarkand conferred its freedom on all five spacemen.

But immediately after the docking it seemed as if things were going dangerously wrong- General Stafford reported to Houston that he could smelt burning—” something like cordite (explosive)“.

The three American astronauts—General Stafford, Mr Slayton and Mr Vance Brand— were ordered to keep their masks on while controllers studied the problem.

But the smell was soon traced to the docking module and found to be harmless. It had been caused by an electric furnace used earlier for an experiment in crystal formation.

Eventually - General Stafford and Mr Slayton left Mr Brand in Apollo and clambered into the air-lock linking the two craft. There they gradually accustomed themselves to the change of atmosphere from the oxygen in Apollo to the air in Soyuz.

Then at 7.17 pm GMT the interconnecting door was un locked and the two astronauts floated into Soyuz to an enthusiastic greeting From Colonel Leonov and Mr Valeri Kubasov, his flight engineer.

In honour of the historic occasion the cosmonauts laid on a banquet consisting of green borscht sucked out of a tube jellied turkey, apples, sweets and fruit juice.

The unprecedented meeting in space bad been achieved by a brilliant piece of guidance and navigation by the crew of Apollo that had the job of catching the Russian capsule. It was a manoeuvre in which the American astronauts brought their craft up from below, first to overtake the Russians from beneath, then to go over the top to come to link up from behind.

In the process the two crews demonstrated the ability of the specially devised universal docking system to make rescues possible from a disabled airçraft in space.

Both Mr Brezhnev and President Ford broadcast to Soyuz after the Americans had floated in. In a message read on his behalf Mr Brezhnev told the spacemen: “Your successful

docking confirms the correctness of technical solutions that were worked out and realized cooperation by Soviet and American scientists, designers and cosmonauts. One can that Soyuz-Apollo is a prototype of future international orbital stations.”

Speaking personally, President Ford said the space rendezvous was “a tremendous demonstration of cooperation” and he hoped it would set an example for “what we have to do in the future to make it a better world “.

During the 44 hours in which the Soyuz and the Apollo remain linked together, the teams are to carry out joint experiments. Mr Brand, remained in Apollo tonight, is to crawl through to Soyuz about 10 am GMT tomorrow while Colonel Leonov visits Apollo.

The Soyuz returns to Earth in central Asia next Monday while the Apollo delays its splash-down in the Pacific until Thursday.