Skylab...

NASA will commemorate the 40th anniversary of America's first space station.

Engineers manning the consoles in the control and support centers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, and at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, checked off the key events almost routinely as the countdown continued. And the thousands of NASA and contractor management and technical personnel who had lived with Skylab as it evolved from drawing board to launch pad, followed each step, confident that the launch vehicle and the space station would perform as intended.

But this was not to be.

As the moment of launch neared, and the engines on the Saturn first stage thundered into life, no one could have predicted the bizarre series of events that would soon occur.

Precisely on time the huge rocket roared from the launch pad as NASA engineers carefully monitored flight perform ance. As the great rocket climbed into the atmosphere, all systems performed normally. But suddenly, 63 seconds into flight, engineers manning the consoles were startled to see an unexpected telemetry indication of micrometeoroid shield deployment and initiation of deployment of one of the solar-array beam fairings on the workshop. Also, abnormal micrometeoroid shield temperatures were seen. All other signals indicated a normal flight. Ten minutes after launch, the workshop separated as planned from the second stage. Eight seconds later, the workshop entered its nearly circular orbit above the Earth. Then, a planned sequence of deployment and activation procedures began.

The shield, which protected the refrigeration system radiator from exhaust gases from the rocket motors used during the separation sequence, was jettisoned. The workshop was then maneuvered so that its centerline pointed toward the center of the Earth. With the workshop in this position, the radiator faced away from the Sun's hot rays. The refrigeration system was turned on. Then came jettisoning of the payload shroud, and Skylab was maneuvered to its "solar inertial" attitude.
In that attitude, both solar arrays, the solar observatory and one side of the workshop, always faced the Sun. The centerline of the workshop lay in the orbital plane while the centerline of the solar observatory, when rotated to its normal position, pointed toward the Sun. Unlike Apollo, Skylab did not roll, but remained in this one position throughout the orbit unless the attitude needed to be changed so that particular experiments could be conducted.