Skylab

America’s follow-on programme to Apollo was launched in 1973 and housed three crews of three astronauts on long-duration missions of 28, 59 and 84 days. This would

be the first step towards gaining long-duration space flight experience for the Amer­icans, one that would not be followed up until Shuttle-Mir operations over 20 years later. Skylab 1 was fully fitted laboratory and crew quarters in an S-IVB stage that was launched on a two-stage Saturn V. The cylindrical workshop included two large solar arrays, an airlock for EVAs, a multiple docking adapter with two Apollo CSM docking ports (one for a two-man CSM rescue craft to bring home a stranded three-person Skylab crew if required) and the Apollo (Solar) Telescope Mount, which was a converted Apollo Lunar Module descent stage with four extendable solar arrays. Inside the workshop, the former hydrogen tank was divided into crew quarters and a large experiment area. The working volume of the station was 367.9 m3. The Skylab Apollo Command and Service Module weighed 13,782 kg (30,389 lb). It was similar to the Apollo CSMs, but was outfitted for extended-duration missions. Modifications included an additional 680 kg (1,499 lb) propellant tank for the RCS system, and three 500-ampere batteries.

Skylab suffered damage during launch and was almost lost before a crew could be launched to it. However, sterling efforts by ground crews and the astronauts restored the station to operational use and it became one of the success stories of the space

programme, though it is often forgotten in the shadow of Apollo. Skylab was designed to research the potential for a wide range of experimentation in medicine and industrial applications, such as the manufacture of electronic components and pharmaceuticals, as well as astronomy and solar physics observations and Earth remote sensing. Other missions were planned, including a rendezvous with an early Shuttle mission, but the station could not remain in orbit and re-entered in July 1979. Plans for Skylab В and Skylab C were supported but never fully funded.