On May 14, 1973, 25,000 spectators watched as America’s first attempt at a space station launched from Kennedy Space Center. Skylab featured a galley and shower, and was meant to be a pioneering exploration of humans’ ability to live, work, and research in orbit; at 170,000 pounds (77,110 kilograms), it was also the heaviest object put into space to that point. The first crew was scheduled to launch the following day.
The launch did not go to plan, however. Sixty-three seconds in, the micrometeoroid shield deployed at the wrong time and was torn off; its debris wrapped around one of the solar arrays and jammed it. The other solar array was completely broken off by rocket exhaust as the second stage separated. And with the micrometeoroid shield – which also served as the spacecraft’s thermal shield – gone, the spacecraft’s temperature soared, threatening to damage the equipment and supplies inside.
The crew did not launch until May 25, as the astronauts undertook intensive training for a repair mission and engineers scrambled to create plans. Their command module was packed with new supplies, including food and photo equipment, in anticipation of the high temperatures having damaged everything inside Skylab. The astronauts were also given face masks to protect against any toxic gasses that had been outgassed into the space station at such extreme temperatures. Ultimately, they were able to deploy a newly rigged-up sunshade and free the solar array. Their work made Skylab a functional home to three successful missions before it was unable to maintain its orbit and reentered Earth’s atmosphere on July 11, 1979, its debris scattering across the Indian Ocean and Australia.
