Space Stations

International Space Station courtesy of Boeing Picture Gallery

Introduction

Through the years there have been many attempts to design a space station, but only three have come to "life". The first was a Russian space station, Salyut, the second was Skylab , designed by the Americans, and the third was the famous Russian space station Mir. In this section we will discuss these three space stations and the International Space Station, the largest and most complicated project undertaken in space to date.

Salyut

Salyut 1 was launched in 1971 and stayed in orbit for 2 years. It was the first space station and the first of many in the Salyut series. The Salyut series of space stations were designed for both civilian and Soviet military use. Salyut 3 and 5 were both military whilst 4, 6, and 7 were civilian. In 1977, Salyut 6 was launched carrying a crew with members from Czechoslovakia, Poland, GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, Cuba, Mongolia, and Romania. The following space station, Salyut 7 carried a crew for 211 days, which was a record duration in space in 1982.

Skylab

Skylab was America's first space station and had been designed for long duration missions. It had two objectives: to prove that humans could live and work in space for long periods of time, and to expand our knowledge of solar astronomy.

The station was launched from the NASA Kennedy Space Center on May 14th 1973 by a Saturn V launch vehicle. The picture on the right shows the launch courtesy of NASA Skylab Project.

Unfortunately, only sixty-three seconds after lift off the meteoroid shield on the station was torn off by the atmospheric drag. As the shield was ripped away it destroyed solar array number two and number one could be only partially opened. This resulted in the station being left in a situation where it could generate virtually no power.

The first concern of the ground crew was to stablise the station so that it would be safe and habitable for the planned missions. This was achieved in ten days by positioning the station at approximately 50 degrees nose up. This position gave the most favourable balance between Skylab temperatures and power generation. During this period the station had achieved a near circular orbit at the required altitude of 435 kilometers (270 miles). And all the other functions, including deployment of Apollo Telescope Mount (Skylab's solar observatory) occured as planned.

The following months stand as testimony to the resilience of the crews involved. Three crews were launched on the May 25, July 28, and November 16 1973 respectively. All three crews completed their mission schedule as well as repaired the station. They exceeded expectations in their ability to work inside and outside the station whilst undertaking complex repairs to the damaged station. Skylab demonstrated that longer manned missions in space were possible and also that space vehicles could be resupplied whilst in orbit.

After the third and final manned phase of the Skylab mission, ground controllers performed some engineering tests which they had been reluctant to undertake whilst a crew had been on board. The results from these tests helped the controllers to understand the failures in the mission. After these experiments were carried out the station was positioned into a stable altitude and was expected to remain in orbit for eight to ten years.

However in 1977, Skylab was destablized by solar activity. The station began to lose altitude and finally impacted earth on July 11th 1979. The debris dispersion area stretched from the Southeastern Indian Ocean across a sparsely populated section of Western Australia.