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Skylab 3 (also SL-3 and SLM-2) was the second crewed mission to the first American space station,
Skylab Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA, occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974. It was operated by three separate three-astronaut crews: Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. Major operation ...
. The mission began on July 28, 1973, with the launch of NASA astronauts Alan Bean, Owen Garriott, and Jack Lousma in the
Apollo command and service module The Apollo command and service module (CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo (spacecraft), Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functio ...
on the
Saturn IB The Saturn IB (also known as the uprated Saturn I) was an American launch vehicle commissioned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Apollo program. It uprated the Saturn I by replacing the S-IV second stage (, 43, ...
rocket, and lasted 59 days, 11 hours and 9 minutes. A total of 1,084.7 astronaut-utilization hours were tallied by the Skylab 3 crew performing scientific experiments in the areas of medical activities, solar observations, Earth resources, and other experiments. The crewed Skylab missions were officially designated
Skylab 2 Skylab 2 (also SL-2 and SLM-1) was the first crewed mission to Skylab, the first American orbital space station. The mission was launched on an Apollo command and service module by a Saturn IB rocket on May 25, 1973, and carried NASA astronau ...
, 3, and 4. Miscommunication about the numbering resulted in the mission emblems reading "Skylab I", "Skylab II", and "Skylab 3" respectively.


Crew


Backup crew


Support crew

*
Robert L. Crippen Robert Laurel Crippen (born September 11, 1937) is an American retired naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and retired astronaut. He traveled into space four times: as Pilot of STS-1 in April 1981, the first Space Shuttl ...
* Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr *
Karl G. Henize Karl Gordon Henize (;JPL-80 "NASA Creates Portrait of Life and ...
* F. Story Musgrave * William E. Thornton * Richard H. Truly


Mission parameters

*Mass: about *Maximum Altitude: 440 km *Distance: 24.5 million miles (39.4 million km) *Launch Vehicle:
Saturn IB The Saturn IB (also known as the uprated Saturn I) was an American launch vehicle commissioned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Apollo program. It uprated the Saturn I by replacing the S-IV second stage (, 43, ...
*
Perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ell ...
: 423 km *
Apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...
: 441 km *
Inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...
: 50° * Period: 93.2 min


Docking

*Docked: July 28, 1973 – 19:37:00 UTC *Undocked: September 25, 1973 – 11:16:42 UTC *Time Docked: 58 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes, 42 seconds


Space walks

;''Garriott and Lousma'' – EVA 1 :Start: August 6, 1973, 17:30 UTC :End: August 6, 23:59 UTC :Duration: 6 hours, 29 minutes ;''Garriott and Lousma'' – EVA 2 :Start: August 24, 1973, 16:24 UTC :End: August 24, 20:54 UTC :Duration: 4 hours, 30 minutes ;''Bean and Garriott'' – EVA 3 :Start: September 22, 1973, 11:18 UTC :End: September 22, 14:03 UTC :Duration: 2 hours, 45 minutes


Mission highlights

While approaching Skylab a propellant leak developed in one of the Apollo Service Module's reaction control system thruster quads. The crew was able to safely dock with the station, but troubleshooting continued with the problem. Six days later, another thruster quad developed a leak, creating concern amongst Mission Control. For the first time, an Apollo spacecraft was rolled out to Launch Complex 39 for Skylab Rescue, made possible by the ability for the station to have two Apollo CSMs docked at the same time. It was eventually determined that the CSM could be safely maneuvered using only two working thruster quads, and the rescue mission was never launched. After recovering from space sickness the crew, during their first EVA, installed the twin-pole sunshade, one of the two solutions for the destruction of the micrometeoroid shield during Skylab's launch to keep the space station cool. It was installed over the parasol, which was originally deployed through a porthole airlock during Skylab 2. Both were brought to the station by Skylab 2. Skylab 3 continued a comprehensive medical research program that extended the data on human physiological adaptation and readaptation to space flight collected on the previous Skylab 2 mission. In addition, Skylab 3 extended the astronauts' stay in space from approximately one month to two months. Therefore, the effects of flight duration on physiological adaptation and readaptation could be examined. A set of core medical investigations were performed on all three Skylab crewed missions. These core investigations were the same basic investigations that were performed on Skylab 2, except that the Skylab 3 inflight tests were supplemented with extra tests based on what researchers learned from the Skylab 2 science results. For example, only leg volume measurements, preflight and postflight stereophotogrammetry, and in-flight maximum calf girth measurements were originally scheduled for all three Skylab missions. In-flight photographs from Skylab 2 revealed the "puffy face syndrome" which prompted the addition of in-flight torso and limb girth measurements to gather more data on the apparent headward fluid shift on Skylab 3. Other additional tests included arterial blood flow measurements by an occlusive cuff placed around the leg, facial photographs taken before flight and during flight to study the "puffy face syndrome", venous compliance, hemoglobin, urine specific gravity, and urine mass measurements. These inflight tests gave additional information about fluid distribution and fluid balance to get a better understanding of the fluid shift phenomena. The Skylab 3 biological experiments studied the effects of microgravity on mice, fruit flies, single cells and cell culture media. Human lung cells were flown to examine the biochemical characteristics of cell cultures in the microgravity environment. The two animal experiments involved the chronobiology of
pocket mice Perognathinae is a subfamily of rodents consisting of two genera of pocket mice. Most species live in complex burrows within the deserts and grasslands of western North America, They feed mostly on seeds and other plant parts, which they carr ...
and
circadian rhythm A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., endogenous) and responds to ...
in vinegar gnats. Both experiments were unsuccessful due to a power failure 30 hours after launch, which killed the animals. High school students from across the United States participated in the Skylab missions as the primary investigators of experiments that studied astronomy, physics, and fundamental biology. The student experiments performed on Skylab 3 included the study of libration clouds, X-rays from Jupiter, in-vitro immunology, spider web formation, cytoplasmic streaming, mass measurement, and neutron analysis. The crew's health was assessed on Skylab by collecting data on dental health, environmental and crew microbiology, radiation, and toxicological aspects of the Skylab orbital workshop. Other assessments were made of astronaut maneuvering equipment and of the habitability of the crew quarters, and crew activities/maintenance experiments were examined on Skylab 2 through 4 to better understand the living and working aspects of life in space.


S150 Galactic X-Ray Mapping

The S150 X-ray experiment was sent up with Skylab 3. The 1,360 kg X-ray astronomy satellite experiment was designed to look for soft galactic x-rays. Short missions had been done before, and S150 would be a longer project. S150 had a large soft x-ray detector, and was mounted atop the Saturn S-IVB upper stage. When released, S150 flew behind and below Skylab on 28 July 1973. The S150 experiment deployed after the Apollo capsule separated from the S-IVB stage. S150 had its own protective housing for the flight. The experiment on S150 ran for 5 hours, as its batteries allowed S150 to measure half of the sky. Experiment data was recorded on
tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...
and sent to ground stations when available. S150 was designed by
University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
scientists Dr. William L. Kraushaar and Alan Bunner. S150 could detect 40-100 angstrom photons.


Spider web experiment

Spider webs were spun by two female European garden spiders (cross spiders) called Arabella and Anita, as part of an experiment on Skylab 3. The aim of the experiment was to test whether the two spiders would spin webs in space, and, if so, whether these webs would be the same as those that spiders produced on Earth. The experiment was a student project of Judy Miles of
Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...
. After the launch the spiders were released by astronaut Owen Garriott into a box that resembled a window frame. The spiders proceeded to construct their web while a camera took photographs and examined the spiders' behavior in a
zero-gravity Weightlessness is the complete or near-complete absence of the sensation of weight. It is also termed zero gravity, zero G-force, or zero-G. Weight is a measurement of the force on an object at rest in a relatively strong gravitational fi ...
environment. Both spiders took a long time to adapt to their weightless existence. However, after a day, Arabella spun the first web in the experimental cage, although it was initially incomplete. The web was completed the following day. The crew members were prompted to expand the initial protocol. They fed and watered the spiders, giving them a house fly. The first web was removed on August 13 to allow the spider to construct a second web. At first, the spider failed to construct a new web. When given more water, it built a second web. This time, it was more elaborate than the first. Both spiders died during the mission, possibly from
dehydration In physiology, dehydration is a lack of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. It occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise, disease, or high environmental temperature. Mi ...
. When scientists studied the webs they discovered that the space webs were finer than normal Earth webs, and although the patterns of the web were not totally dissimilar, variations were spotted, and there was a definite difference in the characteristics of the web. Additionally, while the webs were finer overall, the space web had variations in thickness in places: some places were slightly thinner, and others slightly thicker. This was unusual, because Earth webs have been observed to have uniform thickness. Later experiments indicated that having access to a light source could orient the spiders and enable them to build their normal asymmetric webs when gravity was not a factor.


Mission insignia

The circular crew patch was
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially re ...
's c. 1490 ''
Vitruvian Man The ''Vitruvian Man'' ( it, L'uomo vitruviano; ) is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to . Inspired by the writings by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, the drawing depicts a nude man in two s ...
'', representing the mission's medical experiments and retouched to remove the genitalia. In the background is a disk that is half Sun (including sunspots) and half Earth to represent the experiments done on the flight. The patch has a white background, the crew's names and "Skylab II" with a red, white and blue border. The wives of the crew secretly had an alternate graphic made of a 'universal woman' with their first names in place of the crew's. Stickers with this on them were put in lockers aboard the Command Module to surprise the crew.


Gallery

File:Showering on Skylab (9456594881).jpg, Jack Lousma takes a shower in the station's living quarters Astronaut Alan Bean flies the Astronaut Maneuvering Equipment.jpg, Alan Bean flies a prototype of the Manned Maneuvering Unit Owen Garriott at the Apollo Telescope Mount console.jpg, Owen Garriott operating the Apollo Telescope Mount Owen Garriott sleeping during SKylab 3.jpg, Garriott sleeps in his quarters, held down with straps to keep him secure in zero-G Skylab 3 haircut.jpg, Garriott gives Bean a haircut Skylab 3 meal.jpg, Garriott enjoying a meal in the station's wardroom Sl3-122-2587ellenfromskylab.jpg, Hurricane Ellen of 1973, as seen from Skylab


Spacecraft location

The Skylab 3 command module returned to Earth with Alan L. Bean, Jack R. Lousma, and Owen K. Garriott on September 25, 1973. In 1977 the command module was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution by NASA. The Apollo Command Module used on Skylab 3 was for a time on display at the visitor's center of the NASA Glenn Research Center at the
Great Lakes Science Center The Great Lakes Science Center is a museum and educational facility in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Many of the exhibits document the features of the natural environment in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The facility i ...
in
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...
, Ohio. The module was moved to the Great Lakes Science Center in June 2010. It took a year to plan and US$120,000 to move the capsule.


See also

*
1973 in spaceflight 1973 saw the launch of the first American Space station known as Skylab Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA, occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974. It was operated by three separa ...
* Splashdown (spacecraft landing) * Timeline of longest spaceflights


References

{{Use American English, date=January 2014 1973 in spaceflight Extravehicular activity Human spaceflights Skylab program Spacecraft launched in 1973 Spacecraft which reentered in 1973 Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets Alan Bean