2. AGENDA
• What was the purpose of Skylab?
• What went wrong?
• Why did Skylab fail?
• What were the effects of the Skylab disaster?
• How was the Skylab disaster handled?
3. PURPOSE OF SKYLAB
• Skylab was used to study the Sun, long duration during space flights, how the human
body reacted in space, to teach humans to live space, for microgravity research, and to
function as a lab in orbit without the effects of Earth’s gravity.
• Skylab consisted of 5 parts:
• Orbital Workshop (Living workspace)
• Airlock Module (Space walks)
• Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM)
• Multiple Docking Adapter
• Saturn Instrument Unit (Navigation into orbit and life support system)
4. WHAT WENT WRONG
• SKYLAB I: 63 seconds after liftoff, a
meteoroid shield ripped off, along with
2 solar panels, which prevented
another panel from deploying properly.
Ground Control maneuvered it to face
the sun for as much electricity as
possible, but since the meteoroid
shield also acted as a sun shield,
temperatures rose to 126˚ F.
5. WHAT WENT WRONG
• SKYLAB II: A crew was sent to make
repairs, which they did, but they had
trouble making these repairs due to a
lack of power and an insufficient
amount of electricity for the first two
weeks.
6. WHAT WENT WRONG
• SKYLAB III: An astronaut noticed a
piece of ice float by, which meant there
was a leak in the engine. It was then
discovered that this leak closed the
isolation valves. People feared the
astronauts would not return home.
7. WHY SKYLAB FAILED
In Skylab I, the micrometeoroid shield deployed
too early, causing temperatures to rise to
inhabitable levels.
8. WHY SKYLAB FAILED
• There were not enough launch ships to send crews to fix Skylab’s problems in a timely
manner.
• Skylab did not fail the way it was meant to, but the effects of its failure were minimized
with the maintenance from Skylab II and III.
9. HOW THE SKYLAB DISASTER WAS HANDLED
• To solve the micrometeoroid shield problem from Skylab I, a manned crew (Skylab 2) was
sent to install a solar shield to cool the inside temperatures.
• Continued in-flight maintenance issues from Skylab I were repaired by Skylab II, III, and
IV, all different manned missions serving different initial experimentation purposes.
10. THE EFFECTS OF THE SKYLAB DISASTER
• Skylab ultimately cost $3.6 billion and never recovered to its initial conditions.
• Over 300 experiments were performed in orbit to demonstrate the effects of life in space.
• The total number of days Skylab spent in orbit was 2249, over 6 years.
• After the first four missions were deemed unsuccessful, two previously planned missions
were cancelled.
• Once the crew returned safely to Earth, was shut down, and it fell back to Earth in 1977,
leaving debris in the Indian Ocean near Western Australia.
11. WORKS CITED
4, June. "Skylab Space Station." Space Projects - Space Information - Space Shop. Web. 17
Apr. 2011. <http://www.aerospaceguide.net/spacestation/skylab.html>.
"NASA - Skylab." NASA - Home. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.
<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/skylab/>.
"Top 10 Worst Engineering Disasters." Top 10 Lists - Listverse. 4 Dec. 2007. Web. 17 Apr.
2011. <http://listverse.com/2007/12/04/top-10-worst-engineering-disasters/>.
