solar spacecraft

NASA's space shuttle

what's it like in space?

fixing broken satellites

Skylab, the first space station

British astronauts on Mir

the International Space Station (ISS)

Skylab, the first space station

Space stations are basically large satellites where astronauts can live for months on end. Skylab was the first space station built by the USA. It was an orbiting home and science laboratory, where nine astronauts worked and lived.

Skylab was designed to study many different things, and to see how well people could live in a weightless state.

Here's a mission patch badge.

Size		108m by 87m

Mass		76,295 kg

Cost		£40 billion

Orbit time		90 minutes

Skylab was launched on a Saturn V rocket on May 14th, 1973 and had a disastrous start to its journey. One of Skylab's wings with solar cells had been ripped off during launch. The astronauts had to build a huge umbrella of gold foil to protect Skylab from over-heating.


Skylab carried the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM), which had a whole range of solar telescopes and provided amazing pictures of the Sun. Here is a giant explosion seen in helium emission.

The astronauts had to work, eat and sleep in a weightless state. They even carried out an experiment to see if a spider, Arabella, could make a web without the help of gravity. Well, it's not the best web in the world, but it's probably the best web in space and Arabella was proud to call it home!				The orbit of Skylab gave the astonauts a fantastic view of the Earth. Here is a photo of the UK , can you recognise where you live?



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