This week in 1973, Charles Conrad Jr., Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin launched to America’s first space station. Upon arriving at Skylab, the crew installed the parasol sunshade — seen here being stitched together by two seamstresses — and released the solar array wing. Without the sunshade, the temperature inside Skylab’s orbital workshop became dangerously high, rendering the workshop uninhabitable and threatening the interior insulation and adhesive with deterioration. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center engineers and scientists worked to develop an emergency repair procedure that launched just 11 days after the incident. The NASA History Program documents and preserves NASA’s remarkable history through a variety of products — photos, press kits, press releases, mission transcripts and administrators’ speeches. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the History Program’s Web page.
Image credit: NASA