Saturn 1B Rocket (with Skylab 2 Payload) (1:400 scale)
- Launched on May 25th 1973, the first Skylab crew"s most urgent job was to repair the space station. Skylab"s meteorite-&-sun shield & one of its solar arrays had torn loose during launch & the remaining primary solar array was jammed. Without its shield, Skylab baked in the sunshine. The crew had to work fast, because high temperatures inside the workshop would release toxic materials & ruin on-board film & food. After a failed attempt to deploy the stuck solar panel, they set up a >parasol> as a replacement sunshade. The fix worked, & temperatures inside dropped low enough that the crew could enter. For nearly a month they made further repairs to the workshop, conducted medical experiments, gathered solar & Earth science data & performed a total of 392 hours of experiments. The mission tracked two minutes of a large solar flare with the Apollo Telescope Mount & returned some 29, 000 frames of film of the sun. The Skylab 2 astronauts spent 28 days in space, which doubled the previous U.S. record. The mission ended successfully on June 22nd 1973, when Skylab 2 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 9.6 km from the recovery ship USS Ticonderoga. Skylab 2 set the records for the longest duration manned spaceflight, greatest distance travelled & greatest mass docked in space. Conrad set the record for most time in space for an astronaut.