![]() A number of NASA centers studied various space station designs in the early 1960s. Although concentrating on the Moon missions, von Braun also detailed an orbiting laboratory built out of a Horizon upper stage, an idea used for Skylab. ![]() The overall goal of Horizon was to place men on the Moon, a mission that would soon be taken over by the rapidly forming NASA. In 1959, von Braun, head of the Development Operations Division at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, submitted his final Project Horizon plans to the U.S. A smaller station that a single rocket could launch retained value, however, for scientific purposes. A large station was no longer necessary for such purposes, and the United States Apollo program to send men to the Moon chose a mission mode that would not need in-orbit assembly. The development of the transistor, the solar cell, and telemetry, led in the 1950s and early 1960s to unmanned satellites that could take photographs of weather patterns or enemy nuclear weapons and send them to Earth. Von Braun expected that future expeditions to the Moon and Mars would leave from the station. The 80 men aboard the station would include astronomers operating a telescope, meteorologists to forecast the weather, and soldiers to conduct surveillance. He envisioned a large, circular station 250 feet (75m) in diameter that would rotate to generate artificial gravity and require a fleet of 7,000-ton (6,500-metric ton) space shuttles for construction in orbit. Von Braun participated in the publishing of a series of influential articles in Collier's magazine from 1952 to 1954, titled " Man Will Conquer Space Soon!". Clarke, and other early advocates of manned space travel, expected until the 1960s that a space station would be an important early step in space exploration. Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, science fiction writer Arthur C. Post-Skylab NASA space laboratory projects included Spacelab, Shuttle-Mir, and Space Station Freedom (later merged into the International Space Station).Ī closeup view of the Skylab space station taken with a hand-held 70 mm Hasselblad camera using a 100 mm lens and SO-368 medium speed Ektachrome film However, development of the Shuttle was delayed, and Skylab reentered Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated in 1979, with debris striking portions of Western Australia. Plans were made to refurbish and reuse Skylab, using the Space Shuttle to boost its orbit and repair it. Thousands of photographs of Earth were taken, and the record for human time spent in orbit was extended beyond the 23 days set by the Soyuz 11 crew aboard Salyut 1, to as much as 84 days by the Skylab 4 crew. The Earth Resources Experiment Package (EREP) was used to view Earth with sensors that recorded data in the visible, infrared, and microwave spectral regions. Numerous scientific experiments were conducted aboard Skylab during its operational life, and crews were able to confirm the existence of coronal holes in the Sun. The rear of the station included a large waste tank, propellant tanks for maneuvering jets, and a heat radiator. Electrical power came from solar arrays, as well as fuel cells in the docked Apollo CSM. Skylab included the Apollo Telescope Mount, which was a multi-spectral solar observatory, Multiple Docking Adapter (with two docking ports), Airlock Module with EVA hatches, and the Orbital Workshop, the main habitable volume. The first crew was able to save it in the first in-space major repair, by deploying a replacement heat shade and freeing the jammed solar panels. This deprived Skylab of most of its electrical power, and also removed protection from intense solar heating, threatening to make it unusable. The station was damaged during launch when the micrometeoroid shield separated from the workshop and tore away, taking one of two main solar panel arrays with it and jamming the other one so that it could not deploy. On the last two manned missions, an additional Apollo / Saturn IB stood by ready to rescue the crew in orbit if it was needed. Three manned expeditions to the station, conducted between May 1973 and February 1974 using the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) atop the smaller Saturn IB, each delivered a three-astronaut crew. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a weight of 170,000 pounds ( Template:Convert/pround kg), the last launch of a Saturn V rocket. Skylab orbited Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA and was the United States' first space station. Space Shuttle ' Template:Infobox space station ![]()
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