On May 14, 1973, the final Saturn V rocket lifted off to deploy Skylab, America’s first space station. Despite a troubled start to its life, Skylab pioneered long-duration spaceflight, and fifty years later lessons learned in this program are still contributing to the success of the International Space Station. With Apollo 11’s successful landing on the Moon in July 1969, NASA had met President Kennedy’s challenge of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of the 1960s. While six more crewed lunar missions would follow over the next three and a half years, the objective had been achieved and funding was cut. With missions past Apollo 17 canceled, NASA’s attention returned to low Earth orbit, and the development of a space station using Apollo hardware. This would allow the agency to continue scientific research and study the effects of spaceflight on crews over the course of long-duration missions. The launch of Skylab came two years after the Soviet Union had deployed the world’s first space station, Salyut 1. This station only hosted a single crew, which arrived aboard the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission in June 1971, the earlier Soyuz 10 mission…
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Skylab at 50 – How the United States entered the space station era
