Remembering Skylab’s launch, 50 years on. The eventual success of America’s first space station, Skylab, was masked by a troubled launch that almost halted the mission in its tracks.

Skylab was the United States' first space station and represented the nation's first effort at long-term human space missions. ... accidentally opened about 63 seconds into the launch.

During the May 14 launch, Skylab’s micrometeorite shield, which also functioned as a sun shade, was shorn off, leaving the newly orbital space station to roast in the direct sunlight.

When exactly did Skylab launch and what went wrong almost immediately? The “Skylab space station,” as NASA calls it, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center May 14, 1973.

While Skylab's Saturn V launch vehicle sat at LC-39A, the neighboring pad, LC-39B, was mounted with a smaller Saturn IB rocket carrying the lab's awaiting crew.

The film documents the Skylab mission, focusing on the challenges faced during the first crewed mission to the space station. After an unsuccessful initial launch and significant technical ...

Unfortunately, the flight of our cardboard Skylab went much smoother than the real mission. Originally, the initial crew for Skylab was scheduled to launch the day after the space station was sent ...

One of the largest and best-known launch complexes is Launch Complex 39 , which NASA has used at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to stack and launch rockets for the Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle ...

Fifty years ago, on May 25, 1973, three NASA astronauts were launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to spend a month aboard Skylab, America's first space station. Their first order of ...

Skylab was the first U.S. space station, launching to low Earth orbit on May 14, 1973. The orbiting lab had only three crews during its short life, but each successive mission set new duration ...