Skylab: First U.S. Space Station Skylab: First U.S. Space Station By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | February 1, 2013 06:40pm ET MORE 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. [ Photos: Skylab, the 1st U.S. Space Station ] 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. Crew members emerged from an expected communications blackout in a foul mood, according to an official NASA account of the mission. "The astronauts were venting their frustration with four-letter words, while Houston repeatedly tried to remind them that communication had resumed," NASA wrote. Realizing the tools they had with them that day would not work, Conrad abandoned the exercise and focused on trying to dock his spacecraft with the station. Unfortunately, the docking mechanism failed and the crew had to depressurize the spacecraft and bypass electrical connections to achieve it. In subsequent days, Conrad's crew erected a sun shade , successfully deployed the stuck array, and began operational work aboard the station.

While the incident was frustrating for the teams involved, it also demonstrated that it was possible to fix a badly damaged space station while it is in orbit. Cutaway view of Skylab Huge NASA Satellite Falling to Earth Is Largest in 30 Years Huge NASA Satellite Falling to Earth Is Largest in 30 Years By Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer | September 21, 2011 06:00am ET MORE The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite hangs in the grasp of the Remote Manipulator System during deployment from Space Shuttle Discovery, September 1991. Credit: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center For the latest news about NASA's UARS spacecraft fall, visit: Falling NASA Satellite: Complete Coverage of UARS Spacecraft's Fiery Demise . A dead climate satellite that has been gradually falling toward Earth is expected to plummet down within days, making it the most massive NASA satellite to make an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere in over three decades, agency officals say. NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite , or UARS, is expected to plunge toward Earth sometime around Friday (Sept. 23), based on the latest estimates by the agency's orbital debris experts.

The bus-size UARS satellite is one of the largest NASA satellites to plunge back to Earth uncontrolled in more than 30 years. "The most massive NASA satellite to re-enter uncontrolled since Skylab was the Pegasus 2 satellite in November 1979," Nick Johnson, chief scientist of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told SPACE.com in an email. "It had a mass of 10.5 metric tons, almost twice that of UARS." [ Worst Space Debris Events of All Time ] Skylab was the first American space station and fell to Earth in 1979, with debris falling into the Indian Ocean and onto parts of Australia. In 2003, debris from NASA's 100-ton space shuttle Columbia fell over Texas during re-entry in a tragic accident that killed seven astronauts. However, Columbia was a crewed spacecraft —not an unmanned satellite — and broke apart due to heat shield damage during what was supposed to be a controlled descent and landing. Yet, despite the uncontrolled nature of the UARS spacecraft's return, the chance of any debris landing in a populated area remains extremely remote, agency officials said.

According to NASA, there is a 1-in-3,200 chance that debris from the UARS satellite could hit anyone anywhere in the world. But, calculating the chance that you will get hit is a different figure entirely, and the odds of that happening are somewhere on the order of 1-in-several trillion, Matney said. "There's always a concern," Mark Matney, a scientist with NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, said in an interview. "But, populated areas are a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Much of the Earth's surface has either no people or very few people. We believe that the risk is very modest ." Tracking a falling satellite While NASA and the Air Force are tracking the UARS satellite as its orbit decays, officials are unable to pinpoint exactly when and where the debris will fall. [ Complete Coverage: NASA's Falling UARS Satellite ] Current predictions of the debris drop zone cover most of the planet — anywhere between the latitudes of northern Canada and southern South America. Scientists will not be able to narrow down the impact zone until about two hours before pieces of the defunct satellite hit the ground.

"It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry," NASA officials said in their latest update. "Predictions will become more refined over the next two days." Scientists in the agency's Orbital Debris Program Office estimate that at least 26 large pieces of the satellite will survive the fiery trip through Earth's atmosphere. "It's partly a matter of not knowing enough," said Ray Williamson, executive director of the Secure World Foundation, an organization dedicated to the peaceful use of outer space. "The shape of the structure is not perfectly spherical, so when it heats up and starts to break up, it will break into odd pieces. Once it begins to break up, then they can get a better sense of where this is roughly going to hit." Falling to Earth UARS is expected to re-enter over a 500-mile (804-kilometer) path, but since majority of the Earth is covered with ocean, debris from the satellite will likely fall over water or remote, desolate regions of the planet, NASA officials have said. "We're pretty small compared to the total land surface area of the Earth," Williamson told SPACE.com.

"There is so much open space and ocean that generally we don't have to worry very much about debris hitting a structure or a human." The massive climate satellite measures 35 feet (10.7 meters) long and 15 feet (4.5 m) wide. Originally, agency officials thought the UARS satellite would fall to Earth sometime between late September and early October, but due to heightened solar activity last week, the spacecraft has been falling faster than expected . "As sunspots increase on the sun, the type of extreme ultraviolet radiation that affects the upper atmosphere increases also," Matney explained. "The more the atmosphere heats, the more it expands, and the spacecraft sees more drag." UARS and beyond NASA and the U.S. Strategic Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are closely monitoring the falling UARS satellite and have been providing updates about the spacecraft's orbit. For now, Friday remains the best estimate for when debris from UARS will reach ground. [ Infographic: NASA's Falling UARS Satellite Explained ] The $750 million UARS satellite was launched in 1991 aboard the space shuttle Discovery to study the ozone layer and Earth's upper atmosphere .

The spacecraft far outlived its original three-year mission, but was finally decommissioned by NASA in December 2005. Even though the falling UARS satellite is not expected to pose a significant danger to humans, Williamson hopes the event highlights the critical nature of space debris, and the need to promote space situational awareness. "It's a serious issue," he said. "I directed this project that did the first space debris study for US Congress. At that point, hardly anybody knew about space debris, and I thought it was very frustrating because I could see the way things were going. It turns out a decade or two later, the issue has become so concerning to people that they have begun to pay real attention to it. I think this re-entry will certainly cause a lot of interest in people." You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Editor's Recommendations Random Facts- First American Space Station First American Space Station jon June 9, 2012 0 Facts : Skylab, the first American space station, fell to the earth in thousands of pieces in 1979.

Thankfully most over the ocean. Click Here For Fun Movie Facts The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry - History in the Headlines The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry July 11, 2012 By Elizabeth Hanes Skylab floats above Earth in February 1974. Share this: The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry Author The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry URL Google On July 11, 1979, the world watched as Skylab, America’s first manned space station, hurtled toward Earth. With the massive orbiter nearing re-entry, reactions on the ground ranged from fear to celebration to commercial opportunism. On the 33rd anniversary of Skylab’s fiery return to terra firma, find out more about the causes and fallout of the crash, as well as how NASA scrambled to cope with it. 1. Skylab was made to go up but not to come back down.

The space station known as Skylab was designed as an orbiting workshop for research on scientific matters, such as the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. Because the project represented the next step toward wider space exploration, NASA threw itself into successfully putting Skylab in orbit. Unfortunately, the agency spent far less time and energy planning how to gracefully bring the space station back to Earth at the end of its mission. Even though Skylab was devised for just a nine-year lifespan, NASA failed to build in any control or navigation mechanisms to return the orbiter to terra firma. Doing so would have “cost too much,” administrator Robert Frosch said at the time. This lack of preparation presented a problem in late 1978, when NASA engineers discovered the station’s orbit was decaying rapidly. Skylab had become a 77-ton loose cannon. As word spread of the impending uncontrolled crash of the space station, Congress and the public demanded to know how NASA intended to avoid human casualties from the potential disaster. NASA responded with a plan to rehabilitate the laboratory-in-the-sky.

The agency would use a new tool in development—the space shuttle—to boost Skylab into a higher orbit, thereby extending the lab’s operational life by about five years. After that, the station would simply continue to orbit as a shell, like the millions of tons of floating detritus now known as space junk. Funding and other snafus delayed the shuttle project, however, so NASA had to come up with a new plan. On July 11, 1979, with Skylab rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station’s booster rockets, sending it into a tumble they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean. They were close. While large chunks did go into the ocean, parts of the space station also littered populated areas of western Australia. Fortunately, no one was injured. 2. In June 1979, as the crash approached, Skylab-inspired parties and products were all the rage in the United States. The imminent crash of Skylab midway through 1979 coincided with Americans’ declining confidence in their government. The stagnant economy and a second oil crisis dropped Congress’ approval rating to just 19 percent that year.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many people took an irreverent view of the demise of Skylab, a government project. The Associated Press reported several instances of “Skylab parties” occurring across the United States. In St. Louis, Missouri, the “Skylab Watchers and Gourmet Diners Society” announced plans to view Skylab’s last orbit during a garden gathering at which “hard hats or similar protective headgear” were required. The Charlotte, North Carolina, News-Observer reported that a local hotel designated itself an “official Skylab crash zone (complete with painted target)” and was holding a poolside disco party. Mocking NASA’s inability to say precisely where Skylab would land, entrepreneurs across the country sold T-shirts emblazoned with large bullseyes. Another enterprising individual took a different tack and sold cans of “Skylab repellent.” 3. In Europe and Asia, fear of Skylab’s re-entry prompted unusual safety measures. While Americans used Skylab’s looming demise as an excuse to party in June 1979, people in other countries didn’t take things quite so lightly.

Initially, NASA could not specify when or where Skylab would come down, though the agency mapped out a potential debris field that spanned about 7,400 kilometers across the Indian Ocean and Australia. Even those who lived outside the projected debris footprint were nervous, however. The unexpected fiery crash in January 1978 of a Soviet satellite in northern Canada had scattered enriched uranium across a wide swath of grassland, and people around the globe feared a similar outcome from the Skylab impact—even though the space station contained no radioactive components. Few people felt reassured by NASA’s statement that the risk of human injury from the event was just “one in 152.” After NASA pinpointed the re-entry date as July 11, Scotland’s Glasgow Herald reported, “Worried holidaymakers in Devon [England] are taking no chances—they plan to sit out the morning in an old smuggler’s cave.” In Brussels, authorities planned to sound as many as 1,250 air raid-type sirens in the event that Skylab rained wreckage across the bucolic Belgian countryside. 4. An Australian youth profited handsomely from the Skylab crash, thanks to an American newspaper.

Beginning in June of 1979, as Skylab’s re-entry approached, many American newspapers jokingly proposed “Skylab insurance,” which would pay subscribers for death or injury caused by flying orbiter fragments. The San Francisco Examiner went one step further, offering a $10,000 prize to the first person to deliver a piece of Skylab debris to its office within 72 hours of the crash. Knowing the orbiter wasn’t coming down anywhere near the continental United States, the newspaper felt it was making a safe bet. It didn’t count on news of the bounty traveling all the way to Australia. There, 17-year-old Stan Thornton of tiny Esperance awoke to the commotion when Skylab broke apart in the atmosphere and pelted his house with space station fragments. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a few charred bits of material from his yard, hopped on a plane without so much as a passport or suitcase and made it to the Examiner’s office before the deadline. The newspaper good-naturedly paid out the award. 5. You won’t find the biggest and best pieces of Skylab wreckage in the United States. For that, head to the outback.

Those who remember the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy of 1986 recall how diligently NASA searched for pieces of the vehicle and tried to ensure none were taken as “souvenirs.” More recently, when a notebook containing the handwritten calculations of Apollo 13’s James Lovell went up for auction, NASA stepped in to assert ownership of the item before reversing its decision and allowing Lovell to sell it. So it may seem odd that very few large pieces of Skylab debris reside in museums in the United States. Instead, space memorabilia enthusiasts must travel to the far-flung reaches of southwestern Australia, where several museums contain pieces of the orbiting space laboratory. The Balladonia museum houses a pair of large pieces of sheet metal from the orbiter. One is emblazoned with “SKYLAB” in red letters, while the other piece is labeled “Airlock/Danger.” The Esperance, Australia, museum features two chunks of a Skylab oxygen tank; the smaller one was dug up by a rancher in 1990. 6. It’s possible to own a piece of Skylab debris today.

Although today NASA claims any fragment of Skylab is the property of the United States, the agency didn’t enforce ownership at the time the space station crash-landed. In fact, NASA officials at Marshall Space Flight Center examined a number of specimens provided by the Australians who discovered them, mounted the items on plaques attesting to their authenticity and returned them to their finders. Newspaper accounts of the day noted that the United States could, under international treaties, claim the debris, but chose to adopt a finders-keepers approach instead. Many Australian prospectors who uncovered Skylab artifacts never reported the finds to authorities after tales of confiscated booty made the rounds. Because the orbiter almost completely burned up on re-entry, the majority of its remnants consist of very small shards. A popular method of capitalizing commercially on the crash at the time seems to have been encasing these items in Lucite for preservation and then selling them. These and other items, such as purported Skylab toothpaste and canned meals, can be purchased at various online auction sites. Tags Skylab Space Station Tweet on Twitter Skylab was the first US space station and the world’s first big space station.

It was launched on May 14th, 1973 by a Saturn V Rocket. Skylab Space Station was assembled from Saturn V and Apollo components. Skylab’s purpose was to serve as a laborarory for scientific experiments in space until February 1974. An Apollo Spacecraft was used to transport the crew to Skylab and to return them to the Earth’s surface. It was a launched on a Saturn 1B rocket. Skylab was used to study: – the Sun. – microgravity research – learn more about Earth. – to test the effects of long-duration space flights and to see how the human body reacts in space – to helped us learn to live and work in space. – to conduct a variety of scientific and technological experiments, such as metallic-crystal growth in the weightless state. – and function as a laboratory in earth orbit.

Skylab Specifications: Structure Weight: 91 metric ton (100-ton) Height: 36 metres (118 feet) Diamater: 6.7 metres (22 feet) Altitude of Orbit: 435km (270 miles) Orbital Mass: 77,088kg Habitable Volume: 283 cubic metres (10,000 cubic feet) Skylab Space Station was a modified third stage of a Saturn V moon rocket. Skylab was actually the refitted S-IVB second stage of a Saturn IB booster (from the AS-212 vehicle), a leftover from the Apollo program originally intended for one of the canceled Apollo earth orbital missions. A product of the Apollo Applications program (a program tasked with finding long-term uses for Apollo program hardware). Skylab consisted of five parts: Orbital Workshop was the living and working area for the crew. Airlock Module was used by the Astronauts to access the outside of Skylab for spacewalks. Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) was attached to one end of the cylindrical workshop. It was used to study our sun, stars and earth with no atmospheric interference.

Multiple Docking Adapter allowed more than one Apollo spacecraft to dock to the station at once. The Saturn Instrument Unit (IU) was used by NASA teams in Huntsville to reprogram the space station using a massive ring of computers. The unit was used to guide Skylab itself into orbit. IU also controlled the jettisoning of the protective payload shroud and activated the onboard life support systems, started the solar inertial attitude maneuver, deployed the Apollo Telescope mount at a 90-degree angle and deployed Skylab’s solar wings. SKYLAB FLIGHTS Skylab orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days and 13 hours of its occupation during the three manned Skylab missions. Astronauts performed ten spacewalks totalling 42 hours 16 minutes. Skylab 1 – May 14, 1973 Unmanned A two-stage version of the Saturn V rocket launched Skylab to orbit on May 14, 1973 from the NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida. During the launch, the station was damaged.

A critical meteoroid shield and one of the station’s two main solar panels were ripped off and the other solar panel was not fully stretched out. That meant that Skylab had little electrical power and the internal temperature rose to 126 degrees Fahrenheit (52 degrees Celsius). Originally it was planned that a crew would be launched from Earth the next day to inhabit the space station. Sixty-three seconds after liftoff, however, a critical meteoroid shield ripped off, taking one of the craft’s two solar panels with it and preventing the other from deploying properly. Ground command maneuvered Skylab so its solar panels faced the Sun to provide as much electricity as possible. But because the meteoroid shield was gone (which also operated as a sun shield), temperatures inside the workshop rose to 126˚F (52˚C). The launch of Skylab 2 (the first crew to inhabit the space station) was postponed for 10 days while scientists, engineers, astronauts and management personnel at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and elsewhere developed procedures and trained the crew to make the workshop habitable. At the same time, engineers “rolled” Skylab to lower the temperature of the workshop.

Almost immediately, technical problems developed due to vibrations during lift-off. A critical meteoroid shield ripped off taking one of the craft’s two solar panels with it; a piece of the shield wrapped around the other panel keeping it from deploying. Skylab was maneuvered so its Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) solar panels faced the Sun to provide as much electricity as possible. Because of the loss of the meteoroid shield, however, this positioning caused workshop temperatures to rise to 52 degrees Celsius (126 degrees F). The launch of Skylab 2 was postponed while NASA engineers, in an intensive 10-day period, developed procedures and trained the crew to make the workshop habitable. At the same time, engineers “rolled” Skylab to lower the temperature of the workshop. On the first launch, part of Skylab fell off. It tore one solar panel. It wrapped around the other panel so it could not open. The crew was supposed to go up the next day. They had to wait until a way to solve these problems was found. They flew to Skylab 11 days later. The first thing they had to do was fix the problems.

Skylab 2 Skylab 2 was launched on May 25, 1973 and landed on June 22, 1973. The mission duration was 28 days, 50 minutes. This was the first manned mission to Skylab. They orbited the Earth 404 times, completed 392 experiment hours, and carried out three spacewalks totalling six hours, 20 minutes. The first Skylab crew were: – Charles C. Conrad Jr. – Paul J. Weitz – Joseph P. Kerwin The first task was to make repairs. These included positioning of a parasol sunshade that cooled the inside temperatures to a more comfortable 75˚F (23.8˚C). By June 4, 10 days after launch, the workshop was fully operational, and the crew began to conduct solar astronomy and Earth resources experiments, medical studies, and student experiments. In the period up to June 22, when the crew left for home. Skylab was damaged during launch on May 25, 1973, but the crew, veteran astronaut Conrad (Commander), Joseph P.

Kerwin, and Paul J. Weitz, all of the navy, carried out EVA repairs, erected a heat-shielding canopy over the exterior of the spacecraft and freed a jammed solar panel. Their flight lasted 28 days. INSTALLED SOLAR SHIELD “PARASOL” FROM SCIENTIFIC AIRLOCK RELEASED SOLAR ARRAY WING ON EVA DOUBLED PREVIOUS LENGTH OF TIME IN SPACE The first crew was launched 10 days later to fix the ailing station. The astronauts stretched out the remaining solar panel and set up an umbrella-like sunshade to cool the station. Joe Kerwin was on the first Skylab crew. He said that the first 2 weeks on the station were very hard. They did not have enough power to run things. They didn’t even have enough power to make coffee! The crew had to change their plans until everything was fixed. Once the power was running, the crew could start the real work on Skylab. Skylab 3 Skylab 3 was launched on July 28, 1973 and landed on September 25, 1973. This was the second Skyab maned mission.

The mission duration was 59 days, 11 hours. The crew completed 858 Earth orbits and 1,081 hours of solar and Earth experiments and carried out three spacewalks totalling 13 hours, 43 minutes. The second crew were: – Jack R. Lousma – Owen K. Garriott After an early bout of motion sickness, they continued the work of the previous crew. Garriott and Lousma deployed a second sun shield during a spacewalk that lasted six and a half hours. The second crew also had a problem. On the way up, Jack Lousma looked out the window. He thought he saw a nozzle floating by. It wasn’t. It was a piece of ice. That ice showed there was a problem. There was a leak in the engine. Once the crew was on the station, another engine started leaking. People on the ground were afraid that the crew might not be able to come home. A rescue mission was planned. Two astronauts would fly to Skylab to bring the crew back home. But, they didn’t have to go. The capsule that took the crew to Skylab was able to bring them home safely.

Installed twinpole solar shield durng space walk, performed major inflight maintenace, doubled prvious length of time in space. Skylab 4 Skylab 4 was lauched on November 16, 1973 and landed on February 8, 1974. This was the final mamed mission to Skylab. The mission duration was 84 days, 1 hour. At 84 days and 1 hour, Skylab 4 remains the longest U.S. spaceflight to date. The crew completed 1,214 Earth orbits and four spacewalks totalling 22 hours, 13 minutes. Increased previous length in space by 50%. The last skylab crew were: – Gerald P. Carr – William R. Pogue – Edward G. Gibson The crew used a treadmill in addition to the on-board bicycle-like ergometer to help stay in shape. The last of the Skylab missions, its experiments. They observed and photgraphed Comet Kohoutek. The Skylab project was considered completely successful.

More than 740 hr were spent in observing the sun by telescopes, and 175,000 solar pictures were returned to earth, as were about 64 km (about 40 mi) of electronic data tape and 46,000 photographs of the earth’s surface. On July 11, 1979, during its 34,981st orbit, Skylab plunged to earth, raining fiery debris over sparsely populated western Australia and over the Indian Ocean. during the three manned Skylab missions. When the flight of the third crew was finished, Skylab was abandoned. Skylab remained aloft until intense solar flare activity caused its orbit to decay sooner than expected. Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and burned over Australia in 1979. Following the last mission the Station was positioned in a parking orbit expected to last at least 8 years. Increased solar activity heating the outer layers of the earth’s atmosphere and thereby increasing drag on the Station led to an early reentry on July 11, 1979.

Skylab disintegrated over Western Australia and the Indian Ocean, casting large pieces of debris in populated areas (fortunately, the only casualty being an Australian cow). The reentry prevented any further use by the then unfinished Space Shuttle as was envisioned by some at NASA. After all crew activities had been completed and the crews had returned to Earth, Skylab was positioned into a stable attitude and systems were shut down. It was expected that Skylab would remain in orbit for eight to ten years. However, in the fall of 1977, Skylab was no longer flying in a stable attitude as a result of greater than predicted solar activity. On July 11, 1979, the empty Skylab spacecraft returned to Earth, scattering debris from the south-eastern Indian Ocean across a sparsely settled region of western Australia. NASA and the U.S. space program were criticized for allowing this to happen-ranging from the sale of hardhats as “Skylab Survival Kits” to serious questions about the propriety of space flight altogether if people were likely to be killed by falling debris. It was an inauspicious ending to the first American space station, not one that its originators had envisioned.

Nevertheless, the experiment had whetted the appetite of NASA leaders for a permanent presence in space On the 11th July, 1979, Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmoshpere and scattered debris over the Indian Ocean and the sparsely settled region of Western Australia. Conclusion Three crews visited Skylab. Each of the Skylab crews set new time records. The last crew set a record that was not broken for over 20 years. Did you know? * Two flight-quality Skylabs were built. The second (backup) is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, USA. * Skylab was launched in one launch and required no assembly. The International Space Station (ISS) will take many years to put together in orbit. * Skylab was the first and only United States Space Station to date. The ISS involves many countries. A POST-APOLLO PROGRAM In 1969 a Space Task Group recommended to President Richard Nixon a space program to follow the missions to the Moon. The plan included a permanently occupied space station, a reusable shuttle spacecraft, and eventual missions to Mars. But because of increasing budget pressures these ideas received little political or public support.

Only the Space Shuttle won favor and funding, and even that decision was controversial. When the last two Apollo missions were cancelled, NASA used some of the remaining Apollo hardware for an experimental space station, Skylab, as an interim program before the Shuttle was ready to fly. Although the STS-107 spiders were the first Australian animals in space, they weren’t the first spiders in space. Anita and Arabella, two female cross spiders (Araneus diadematus) went into orbit in 1973 for Skylab 3 space station. Like the STS-107 experiment, the Skylab experiment was a student project. Judy Miles, from Lexington, Massachusetts, wanted to know if spiders could spin webs in near-weightlessness. Here is Judith Miles: In zero gravity, a lot of things tumble, roll, flip and tip. Can you name something that spins in zero-gravity? Hint: it has eight legs and would scare Miss Muffet. That’s right: a spider. In this case, two of them. Anita and Arabella took off into space way back in 1973. They were on board Skylab, an early, experimental orbiting space station.

Also on board were 720 fruit flies, six mice, two minnows and 50 minnow eggs! Busy place. What was this creature-zoo up to? They were all part of student experiments. Anita and Arabella were onboard for high school student Judy Miles from Lexington, Massachusetts. Judy wondered if spiders could spin webs in weightlessness. Good question. So, the lucky student got to team up with NASA space scientists to design an experiment that would measure how well spiders weave their webs in space. So what did Judy and NASA learn? Zero gravity didn’t stop Anita and Arabella from doing what spiders do — spin webs. This little bit of first spider in space Spiders have been astronauts in space missions. In 1973, the two common cross spiders “aranous diadematus” Arabella and Anita became famous for their stay in the Skylab space station. Both spiders were successful in spinning webs in weightlessness; examples can be seen in above images. Unfortunately, these two spiders did not return safely: Anita died in-flight before returning, and Arabella was found dead after splash-down of the Skylab-3 (2nd manned mission) Apollo CM. Arabella and Anita have the right stuff.

These two common spiders were NASA’s first eight-legged astronauts! Anita and Arabella got their mission because a high-school student named Judy Miles wondered if spiders could spin webs in a weightless environment. She suggested sending spiders into space to find out. NASA space scientists liked her proposal and went to work designing special cages, lights, and cameras. On August 5, 1973, Arabella and Anita blasted off into space on Skylab II. On her first day in orbit, Arabella didn’t do well. She spun sloppy webs and obviously felt the effects of weightlessness. However, by her third day in space, she was spinning just as though she were back at home. Her webs were finer in space, which was expected. But the pattern remained the same. She proved that spiders can spin nearly Earth-like webs in space. Though Arabella and Anita have both died, their bodies remain at the Smithsonian, memorialized for their small, vital part in increasing our knowledge of space.

Skylab Links: Skylab's Grave: Remains of 1st American Space Station in Australia Skylab's Grave: Remains of 1st American Space Station in Australia Ben Cooper, SPACE.com contributor Share View photos An oxygen tank from the Skylab Space Station, the largest of several pieces that were recovered from America’s first space station following its reentry in 1979, wrapped in protective plastic. More NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, America's first space station, on Tuesday (May 14), but you might be surprised where this icon of U.S. human spaceflight ended up. After hosting rotating astronaut crews from 1973-1974, the Skylab space station eventually fell back to Earth in pieces that landed in Australia. Now, decades later, many of those pieces are on display at Australian museums, offering a fascinating glimpse into America's first stab at living in space. From May 1973 to February 1974, Skylabsaw a trio of three-man crews take up residence aboard the outpost, before it was abandoned with the plan of possibly using the space shuttle (then under development) to reactivate the laboratory.

But with no way to reboost Skylab to a higher orbit to keep it aloft, and delays in getting the shuttle off the ground , the space station re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Indian Ocean in 1979, with pieces landing inland along the south coast of Western Australia. [ See more photos of Skylab's remains in Australia ] The mostly uncontrolled re-entry was a media sensation at the time, with newspapers offering prizes for the first debris found and to persons impacted by falling pieces. NASA's attempt at sending Skylab into the Indian Ocean, out of harm's way, proved only somewhat successful, and the spacecraft entered several minutes earlier than predicted, slightly off course. Several large chunks and dozens of smaller pieces of Skylab survived the fiery plunge through the atmosphere and impacted the ground in the Australian outback over a large swath centered around the community of Balladonia on the Nullarbor Plain. The largest pieces included the oxygen tanks designed to keep the crew alive during their stays. Skylab on display Visitors can almost miss Skylab .

Tucked away in a large display case in a small city museum, the remains of what fell from the sky on July 11, 1979, can be found in Esperance, a port town with less than 10,000 inhabitants located 450 miles from Perth, which is the only major city in the western half of the sparsely populated country. Esperance was directly under the path of Skylab's re-entry. [ How NASA's Skylab Space Station Worked (Infographic) ] On the outside, the corrugated metal walls and roof of the museum have the appearance of four long warehouses. That's because the Esperance Municipal Museum, founded in 1976 on the site of a former railroad yard, is composed of converted train equipment sheds. From the main road along the waterfront in Esperance, a small blue and yellow sign hung on the side of the building is all that denotes it as a "museum," and a larger hanging billboard makes note of the main attraction inside: "In 1979, a spaceship crashed over Esperance.

We fined them $400 for littering." A stamp next to it reads, "PAID IN FULL." It's true. The local government slapped NASA with a comical $400 bill for the cleanup, though the U.S. space agency never officially paid up. However, on the 30th anniversary of the crash in 2009, a radio host for Highway Radio in California and Nevada used his program to raise the funds and put a formal end to the complaint. The paycheck now hangs above the remains. Spacecraft remains Around the front of the museum, a large model of the space station sits at a sharp angle atop a pedestal. A plaque on the side describes the space station and what happened along this lonely coastline a few decades ago. Inside, most of what remains of Skylab can be found in a large Plexiglas-enclosed display case. The largest oxygen tank sits on the floor adjacent to it, wrapped in plastic. Inside the case, the largest intact pieces are displayed at center.

These include the space station's storage freezer for food and other items, a water tank, nitrogen spheres for the station’s attitude control system thrusters and a piece of what is identified as a portion of the hatch the astronauts would have crawled through during their visits. Many smaller pieces of debris are laid out around the larger chunks, each labeled and identified where possible. Several news articles and photographs circle the case, including photos showing the actual re-entry taken by locals and one featured in a National Geographic story from October 1979. The oversized check created by the Nevada radio station, which was used to pay the litter fine, sits proudly above it, and a proclamation from Barstow proclaiming July 13, 2009, as "Shire of Esperance/Skylab Day" lies mounted on a plaque alongside a key to the city. Portions of the debris were sent elsewhere to be displayed, such as in the United States and Sydney. And it is possible that other pieces of debris remain in the remote outback, still waiting to be found. If you visit Skylab If you are visiting Western Australia, the Esperance Municipal Museum is located on James Street, between the waterfront Esplanade and Dempster Street.

There is a $4 admission fee. Allow 30 minutes if your goal is to see Skylab only. Another of the large oxygen tanks that survived Skylab's fall to Earth is on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney also a portion of a titanium sphere in its collection, but it is not believed to be on display right now. Huge NASA Satellite Will Fall to Earth Today Huge NASA Satellite Will Fall to Earth Today <a href=' Chow</a>, SPACE.com Staff Writer<br /><a href="" >Space.com</a> Pin it Share For the latest news about NASA's UARS spacecraft fall, visit: Falling NASA Satellite: Complete Coverage of UARS Spacecraft's Fiery Demise . A decommissioned NASA satellite is expected to plummet to Earth today (Sept. 23), and agency officials are monitoring the dead spacecraft closely to try to narrow down when and where the debris will fall.

According to NASA, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite , or UARS, will make its fiery descent through the atmosphere some time this afternoon or early evening (Eastern Daylight Time), but while it is still too soon to tell where pieces of the defunct satellite will land, scientists have been able to rule out North America from the potential impact zone. "Re-entry is possible sometime during the afternoon or early evening of Sept. 23, Eastern Daylight Time. The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period," NASA officials said in a statement late Thursday. "It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 hours." [ Photos of NASA's Huge Falling Satellite UARS ] The bus-size, 6.5-ton UARS spacecraft is one of the largest NASA satellites to plunge back to Earth uncontrolled in more than 30 years. "The most massive NASA satellite to re-enter uncontrolled since Skylab was the Pegasus 2 satellite in November 1979," Nick Johnson, chief scientist of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told SPACE.com in an e-mail last week.

"It had a mass of 10.5 metric tons, almost twice that of UARS." Skylab, the first American space station, fell to Earth in 1979, and debris from the outpost plunged into the Indian Ocean and onto parts of Australia. The Pegasus 2 satellite was launched in 1965 to study micrometeoroids in low-Earth orbit. The satellite remained in orbit for 14 years before splashing down into the mid-Atlantic Ocean on Nov. 3, 1979.[ 6 Biggest Spacecraft to Fall Uncontrolled From Space ] Despite the fact that UARS will fall to Earth uncontrolled , NASA officials have stated that the chance of debris landing in populated regions of the planet is extremely remote. "There's always a concern," said Mark Matney, a scientist at the Orbital Debris Program Office. "But, populated areas are a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Much of the Earth's surface has either no people or very few people.

We believe that the risk is very modest ." Scientists at the Orbital Debris Program Office at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston calculated the odds that anyone anywhere in the world will be hit by UARS debris at 1-in-3,200. But, the chance that you personally will get hit is much smaller, somewhere on the order of 1-in-several trillion, NASA officials said. [ How You Can Track the Falling Satellite ] Agency officials have estimated that roughly 26 large pieces of the satellite will survive the intense journey through Earth's atmosphere. Approximately 1,170 pounds (532 kilograms) of material is expected to actually reach the ground, but even though the spacecraft is expected to re-enter over a 500-mile (804-kilometer) path, these pieces will likely fall over water or uninhabited areas of the planet, Matney said. [ Where Could UARS Satellite Debris Fall? ] The $750 million climate satellite measures 35 feet (10.7 meters) long and 15 feet (4.5 m) wide.

It was launched in 1991 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, and studied the ozone layer and chemical makeup of Earth's upper atmosphere before it was decommissioned in December 2005. Originally, NASA anticipated that the UARS satellite would fall to Earth sometime between late September and early October, but heightened solar activity last week increased the spacecraft's drag, pulling it down to Earth sooner than expected. You can track the UARS satellite fall using several skywatching tools, including the Satellite AR Android app created by the company Analytical Graphics Inc. Editor's note: If you snap a photo or observe the re-entry of NASA's UARS satellite and want to share it with SPACE.com for a story or gallery, contact managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com . You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Project Skylab Project Skylab the first American space station Launched on May 14, 1973, Project Skylab was designed to demonstrate that man could work and live in space for prolonged periods without ill effect.

The Skylab module itself, originally the spent third stage of a Saturn V moon rocket, measured 118 feet from end to end and carried the most varied assortment of experimental equipment ever assembled in a single spacecraft. A total of three three-man crews were sent to the station, with the first crew launched May 25, 1973. Over the course of the project more than 740 hours were spent observing the Sun and over 175,000 solar pictures were taken -- including the first recordings of solar activity taken above Earth's atmosphere. Skylab also evaluated systems designed to gather information on Earth's resources and environmental conditions. Biomedical research conducted on the station indicated that man adapts well to space for periods of at least three months, provided he has a proper diet and adequately programmed exercise, sleep, work, and recreation periods. The Skylab module was designed to provide astronauts with some degree of living comfort, with the first-ever " space shower ," sleeping compartments , waste facilities, recreational space, and a specially-designed triangular grid floor that allowed the astronauts to "walk around" using special shoes equipped with matching triangular cleats.

Many of the innovations first used in the Skylab program were modified over the following years and have made their way into more current space programs, including the Space Shuttle. The third (and ultimately final) mission in the program was launched November 16, 1973. Before leaving Skylab, the third crew nudged the module into an orbit designed to give the station a projected lifespan of 10 years. However, due to unexpectedly high sunspot activity, the orbit of Skylab began to deteriorate in early 1979. On July 11, 1979, the Skylab module fell out of orbit; the parts that did not burn up in the atmosphere came crashing down on parts of Australia and the Indian Ocean -- including one piece the size of a school bus. Fortunately, and amazingly, no one was injured and no significant property damage was reported due to the "fall out." In spite of Project Skylab's short lifespan and some early mechanical difficulties, the project was successful in every way. Skylab Missions and Crews

Question: What was the name of the first American space station, which fell to Earth in 1979?
Answer: Skylab