Skylab: First U.S. Space Station

The Skylab Orbital Workshop experienced a failure that led to a replacement shield to protect against solar heating. CREDIT: NASA.

Skylab was the first space station operated by the United States. It spent six years orbiting Earth until its decaying orbit caused it to re-enter the atmosphere. It scattered debris over the Indian Ocean and sparsely settled areas of Western Australia.

Three crews successfully lived on board the station for several months each. The last crew spent 84 days in orbit an American record that stood until the shuttle era.

Rocky start

Various NASA centers had kicked around ideas for a space station for years before Skylab launched. However, the agency was very focused on the space race and moonshots that dominated public consciousness in the 1960s. Money for other endeavors was not as available.

As Apollo began to wind down in the early 1970s, NASA began an Apollo Applications Program to fly unused hardware from the moon program. One idea, proposed by famous Apollo rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, would be to build a space station out of an unused rocket stage. The design evolved over the years as NASA struggled with reduced funding.

Skylab finally aimed for space on May 14, 1973. However, a meteoroid shield that was supposed to shelter Skylab accidentally opened about 63 seconds into the launch. The still-thick atmosphere tore the shield off, plunging Skylab into a serious situation. The facility experienced communications problems with the antenna as a result of the incident, but that was the least of the agency's worries.

"When the meteoroid shield ripped loose, it disturbed the mounting of workshop solar array wing No. 2 and caused it to partially deploy. The exhaust plume of the second stage retro-rockets impacted the partially deployed solar array and literally blew it into space," NASA wrote.

Workers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center scrambled to stabilize the station. Among other measures, they put the station in an attitude that would minimize overheating, and came up with ways to cope with the station's reduced power situation.

Meanwhile, the first crew led by Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad would need to make the station habitable before they could get to work. The crew's first challenge during the spacewalk, just hours after launch, was deploying the solar array, but initial attempts met with no luck as a metal strip holding it down refused to give way.

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Skylab: First U.S. Space Station