Stephen Bowen remembers seeing Skylab fly overhead.
At age eight, Bowen’s experience of watching the United States’ first space station cross the night sky fueled his interest in space flight. Little did he know then, it would also play a big part in his future.
“I remember it was Skylab” Bowen said in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “My dad took us outside and we actually saw it fly over our house one night.”
“I think that was the first object I’d ever seen in space, you know, as a man-made object seen from Earth,” he said.
Today (May 14), on the 50th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, it is Bowen who is in Earth orbit. Today (May 14), on the 50th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, it is Bowen who is in Earth orbit. At 59 years old, he is the only crew member currently on the International Space Station (ISS) who is old enough to remember the start of the orbital workshop and subsequent crewed expeditions.
“I have very specific memories of those missions,” Bowen said in January, a month before he and three crewmates took off on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft (opens in a new tab) for a six-month stay on the ISS.
Related: Photos: Skylab, America’s first space station.
Fortunately, Bowen’s launch was much less dramatic than when Skylab left Earth.
Unlike the International Space Station, which took 10 years and more than 30 missions to put together, Skylab was put into orbit for a single Saturn V. The last of the Apollo lunar boosters to fly, the space station was built and took the place of the rocket’s third stage.
In pictures: Skylab wreckage: remains of the NASA space station in Australia
In addition to the orbital workshop, the S-IVB stage was outfitted with a solar observatory called the Apollo Telescope Mount, a multi-dock adapter, an airlock module, and solar panels.
The Skylab 1 (or SL-1) mission lifted off at 1:30 pm EDT (1730 GMT) from Pad 39A at NASA. kennedy space center in Florida. For the first minute of the flight, everything went according to plan, but then the station’s micrometeor shield and sunshade, as well as one of its solar panels, fell victim to the supersonic environment and were ripped off. Those components, which were critical to Skylab’s operation, were lost, and debris from the shield became entangled with the remaining solar array, preventing its full deployment.
Skylab went into orbit, but with a significant power deficiency and without the ability to control the temperature inside the workshop to not exceed habitable conditions. The launch of its first three-person crew, which was scheduled for the next day, was pushed back to May 25 as engineers worked to quickly devise how the astronauts would save the station.
Ultimately, the Skylab 2 and Skylab 3 teams were able to free the stuck array and install replacement sunshades, so they and a third mission lived in the workshop for increasing periods, starting at just under a month. to 84 days duration (opens in a new tab). The research and experience gained in those three flights set the standard base for US-led operations (opens in a new tab) on the International Space Station and a continuous human presence in space for 23 years.
“It’s really exciting to carry on that legacy of living in a space stationBowen said.
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