February 8, 1974, the last occupants of the space station Skylab They returned to earth. Thus, this program ended after the astronauts returned to Earth.
Skylab
The Skylab space station was owned by the United States and was planned for ten years, but its funding was canceled and with the construction International Space Station Its mission is over.
Space travel fans, science fiction writers and many scientists have been waiting for a space station to mark the first step for space exploration. The efforts of scientists like Werner von Braun And the end of the Apollo program made NASA think about a space station.
So Skylab was launched in May 1973 by rocket Stern It was launched into low earth orbit.
The station consisted of the Apollo spacecraft module and the service module attached to it. The service module had a solar observatory, a training workshop and several laboratories.
The capacity of the Skylab station was three people and it supported three missions. The first mission lasted 28 days, the second mission lasted 58 days, and the last mission lasted 84 days.
Skylab suffered severe damage once during its operation and was in danger of becoming unusable. But the passengers managed to repair and save it, which was one of the first repairs that took place in space.
End of program
The crew of the third and final Skylab mission observed the Sun and a comet during their time in the orbiting workshop and participated in several medical studies.
They were so overwhelmed with their workload that they even cut off their communication with NASA. All the planned tasks were completed before the end of the station and the astronauts returned to Earth on February 8, 1974, and this was the final farewell to Skylab.
After that the station was abandoned and finally in 1979, its capsule fell into the Pacific Ocean.
