July 11, 1979, End of Skylab Options

[Bill Harris]

(Shamelessly re-cycled from Space Modelers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/space-modelers/ )

From the BBC:

1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth

The US space laboratory, Skylab I, plunged to Earth this evening
scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and sparsely
populated Western Australia.

All week there has been mounting speculation over where the spacecraft
would come down. It has been in orbit six years - for the past five of
those it has been unoccupied.

Skylab's last signal was recorded at 1611 GMT. Less than an hour later a
tracking station at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic confirmed the
solar panels were beginning to peel off as the craft descended.
The 77.5 ton Skylab could break into as many as 500 pieces. The 5,100 lb
(2,310 kg) airlock shroud and 3,900 lb (1,767 kg) lead safe, which
protects film from radiation, are expected to survive the heat of
re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

Head of the NASA task force monitoring Skylab, Richard Smith, said they
had already received reports of hot debris, which had lit up the night
sky, from several points in Western Australia.

'Edge of Cornwall'

Dozens of residents reported seeing debris falling near Kalgoorlie, 370
miles (595 km) northeast of Perth.

Skylab was launched on 14 May 1973 and was lived in by three teams of
astronauts for periods of up to 84 days as they tested human endurance
over long periods of weightlessness.

While the astronauts were on board they were able to carry out many
valuable scientific experiments including analysis of the sun's activity
and how it affected the Earth.

Skylab was abandoned by the last crew in February 1974, since when
scientists have only had limited control over it. It was supposed to
stay in orbit until the mid-1980s when the new shuttle would have come
to its rescue.

A Skylab task force of computer specialists, engineers, lawyers and
public relations experts has been on standby at various NASA centres.
It has been very difficult to predict exactly where and when the craft
would finally come down. Only two days ago, a NASA spokesman had been
predicting it would land near the "edge of Cornwall".

In India, the police in all 22 states were put on full alert and the
civil aviation department was planning to ban flights across the
sub-continent during the crucial hours of re-entry.

Skylab's final orbital path, its 34,981st, passed over the north
Pacific, the north west tip of the United States, south central Canada,
north of Montreal and Ottawa and the state of Maine

[ljk4-1]

I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of why
didn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how
well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this big
hunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earth
over and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not think
about using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left.

Maybe they were hoping that a Space Shuttle mission would save it, but
they still could have done something scientificially useful with Skylab -
after all, it was already in space and had a real working telescope ready
to keep going. But I am probably just thinking logically and not
bureaucratically.

As for rescuing an abandonded space station, the Soyuz T15 mission did
that with Salyut 7 in 1986 in an amazing mission that does not nearly get
the publicity it should to this day.

And NASA was plannnig a special robot ship that a Space Shuttle would
have attached to Skylab to boost it into a higher orbit. Perhaps they
could have launched the rescue robot on an expendable rocket, but
there goes that logical thinking again.

[stevesliva]

As for rescuing an abandonded space station, the Soyuz T15 mission did
that with Salyut 7 in 1986 in an amazing mission that does not nearly get
the publicity it should to this day.

Cool mission, thanks for sharing! Mir to Salyut and back to Mir-- never knew they'd done that. Although it sounds like they didn't exactly rescue the space station as much as they rescued the equipment in it for Mir.

[ljk4-1]

Cool mission, thanks for sharing! Mir to Salyut and back to Mir-- never knew they'd done that. Although it sounds like they didn't exactly rescue the space station as much as they rescued the equipment in it for Mir.

They did get Salyut 7 ready to receive at least one more crew, but the
focus went to Mir and Salyut 7 was ultimately and finally abandoned.