This week in 1967, a mockup of the Skylab Orbital Workshop was shipped from Marshall Space Flight Center to McDonnell Douglas in Huntington, California, for design modifications. Skylab — America’s first space station — began as the Apollo Applications Program with an objective to develop science-based human space missions using hardware originally developed for the effort to land astronauts on the moon. Launched on May 14, 1973, Skylab orbited Earth from 1973 to 1979. The 169,950-pound space station included a workshop, solar observatory, docking adapter and systems to allow three crews to spend up to 84 days in space.
The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the History Program’s webpage.
Image Credit: NASA