 In the months of August and September 1973, a second crew of astronauts lived and worked aboard the Skylab space station. During that two-month span, these men generated a staggering amount of scientific data, data that in some cases will take several years to analyze, and whose impact the scientific world has yet to fully comprehend. For the record, it was the second manned mission of Skylab. But owing to overwhelming success, it might well be called a scientific harvest. July 28, 1973. Skylab, with well over a thousand Earth revolutions, begins its 75th day in orbit. Except for ground solar observations, its systems have been mostly silent for more than a month. Having been powered down when its first tenants departed. Today, the slumbering space station will again be brought to life when the second crew arrives for an extended stay. Their journey will begin at Kennedy Space Center, Launch Complex 39, embarkation point for most of space history. Transportation for the flight is the two-stage Saturn 1B, which is well along in the pre-dawn countdown. In nearby launch control, the vigil is centered in firing room 3. Here, the staccato of digital readouts tells the launch team that all systems are go. The countdown is smooth, almost routine. For the crew, the lectures, the briefings, the simulations, almost two years of intensive training is behind them. Today, they begin the real thing. Navy Captain Alan Bean, senior member of the crew, is Skylab commander. In November 1969, as lunar module pilot of Apollo 12, he walked on the moon. The science astronaut and civilian member is Owen Garriott. He brings to this mission a well-rounded background in science and engineering. The pilot, Marine Corps Major Jack Lausma, who served on support crews for three Apollo missions. For the three of them, the longest space flight ever is about to unfold. For liftoff, right at the T-zero mark, we pass the 15-second mark in the count. T minus 10, 9, 8, 7. We have ignition sequence start. All ignition, all ignitions are running. All engines running. We have a liftoff. Never been a smoother launched sequence. rendezvous occur just off the U.S. Pacific Coast, almost eight hours following liftoff. Oxidizer leak in one of the quad thrusters was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect flight. The leak would mean a slight loss in attitude control on the return flight. But at this point, it appeared to be well within backup control capabilities. Leaving the detailed analysis to ground specialists, the crew wasted no time moving into their temporary home. Within an hour, they had begun restoring Skylab to a living working environment. Activation consumed the better part of the first week, because not everything went according to plan. Because of built-in mission flexibility, the delay had little impact on overall scientific gain. The flight plan was adjusted as required while the crew continued to make headway. The solar astronomy instruments were, meanwhile, delivering data in the unmanned mode. Medical experiments got underway. And some of the corollary science and student experiments were initiated. For example, these minch-mog minnows, being set up for observation, appeared to lose orientation in zero G. Another passenger from Earth was Arabella the spider. This was a student experiment designed to find out the structure of the web she would spin in the weightless state. On mission day six, a second quad thruster indicated failure. Even so, command module control was still adequate for the return flight. However, the uncertainty of additional failure prompted an urgent decision. Hey, uh, how was it, Chris Kraft? It's aced so that we would have a rescue vehicle available to us should that become necessary. Okay, now, I guess, and I'd like to say that further that we're proceeding here with We can call us in any way if you want to. So as a precaution, rescue plans were set in motion. Whether they would be carried out completely depended on assessment of the thruster problem, a problem that could now be fully explored. As the mission entered the second week, the crew stepped up the medical protocol, somewhat slighted up to now because of more pressing needs. We also have a way to measure our heart rate. If this reads out our heart rate, it beats per minute as we're pedaling. Of course, the harder you peddle, the harder your heart has to work, and the better it is for your cardiovascular heart system. While we're pedaling this bicycle during the medical experiment, our breath is analyzed in this metabolic analyzer so that our pulmonary system can be thoroughly evaluated during the period that we're up here. This is used in combination primarily with the lower body negative pressure experiment. The man slides in from the top here. The purpose of the rotating chair is to determine the response of the vesticular system to zero gravity. We've been doing many experiments on this to see how the balance mechanism in the inner ear is affected by weightlessness. Other medical data was compiled from an accurate recording of the daily food and fluid intake. Body waste and food residue were weighed daily, and the wastes were either dried or frozen for return to earth for analysis. The weight of each crewman was also checked daily, not by conventional scales, but by a device that electronically counts time of oscillations of the subject to determine mass, and blood samples were taken. The samples were frozen and later returned for post-flight analysis. The earth resources package was enabled. It's six remote sensing systems put into full operation. Look at earth and its resources. We want to look at its forestry and its agriculture, its freshwater resources, its weather, its pollution, and the number of other resources that do us on the earth. This is called our earth resources experiment package. Consist of about the six experiments with which we look at the earth, and we spend a lot of time taking data here. This particular instrument is a telescope, and we can see a resolution down to a quarter of a mile square. For example, we can see a city block with this telescope. Another battery of experiments also that are associated with earth resources, and they are these cameras that take actual photographs and different wavelengths of light, and then these photographs will then are returned to ground and processed and evaluated. And the purpose of course is to learn how to use our resources on earth more efficiently and more effectively. Hand-held cameras were also unstowed. Their lenses aimed at earth through the ward room window. This was the first of three scheduled EVAs. The amount of work to be performed would make it the longest. Erecting a new sunshade over the workshop was their most difficult task. The parasol, deployed from inside by the first crew, had done an adequate job of thermal protection, but temperatures were still high in places, and to the life of the parasol was questionable. The sunshade would even out workshop temperatures, and it would endure well beyond the final mission. The EVA consumed about double the time allotted, but all tasks were successfully performed. The total time outside the workshop was six and a half hours, a new record for orbital EVA. Temperatures began to fall before the day ended. They eventually stabilized at around 75 degrees, providing the best environment in the workshop since it was launched. The following day, the Apollo telescope mount was put into manned operation, allowing quick and accurate pointing of the telescope array at current solar phenomena. At sunspots, we can see network, we can see filaments, all of these things on the sun, in great detail. Now, this coronagrad visible part of the wavelength, which makes it something that cannot be observed very often from the ground. And this is, it has some occulting discs that are in front of the telescope, so that the center of the image, the disc of the sun, is blotted out, and all we see is the very faint light coming in from the solar corona. Those of us on the ground can only see this at those very infrequent intervals when we have a total eclipse of the sun. Now, up here, we're essentially looking at a total solar eclipse all day long, and we monitor the changes that occur in the corona, and once we tie all of our preparations together here in Skylab, we will monitor the changes that occur in the solar corona over a period of over five months. And some of the changes, solar corona, it stretched the magnetic field like that, like rubber bands, and finally burst the rubber bands, and the gas continued far on out into the corona, and eventually reached the environment of the Earth. Now, when these gas bubbles do reach the environment of the Earth, they cause some very interesting things which we can see, or you can see that they are produced at the magnetic field disturbances, and when they arrive and perturb the Earth's magnetic field, in some way, I fully understood. Dr. Garriott went on to explain instruments that record in the extreme ultraviolet. And instruments that provide data in the X-ray wavelengths. And he talked about that interesting phenomena we call solar flares. Had to get a portion to see several of these since we've been up here in the last four weeks. And when these events occur, we very quickly go over and train all of our instruments on those flares. He photographs as rapidly as possible in as many wavelengths as possible. And we hope to better understand what produces these flares, what is the size of the flare. Better understand the mechanism by which these things are produced. Skylab telescopes also reached out beyond our sun to record the ultraviolet spectra of distant star fields. Early type stars, too faint to be seen with an naked eye, were photographed. As were the abundance of young hot stars in the Milky Way. In conjunction with this experiment were two student investigations designed to obtain ultraviolet spectral data from known pulsars and quasars. In related stellar studies, other instruments were activated to provide a panoramic view and measure ultraviolet brightness of a large number of stars. In evaluating the requirements for future manned space flights, high priority is placed on a machine that will allow an astronaut to move freely in space. Such a machine is the astronaut maneuvering unit. Here, being flight tested by Alan Bean. Need to fly, as you know, I believe this is me flying in here and Jack flew it. And we wanted to ask Owen to fly it since he had gone through none of the training. And he got in there and flew it just as well as either of us with the minimal training and just the on-the-job training up there. Kind of gave you a feeling that this sort of a maneuvering unit could be built where pre-flight training would be minimized and yet you could still do the job you wanted to do outside. A foot-controlled maneuvering unit was later tested. But in its present configuration, it got rather low marks in performance. The future design that will shuttle astronaut between spacecraft or from spacecraft to satellite will likely be similar to the hand-operated model. In web building, Arabella was getting a handle on 0G. The adult minnows, meanwhile, were still confused about which way was up or down. But strangely enough, their children, recently hatched aboard Skylab, came into the world without ever having to adapt to 0G. Will body motions of crewmen affect attitude and control of a space vehicle? This question was put to the test in a series of crew vehicle disturbance runs. A force-measuring system, which senses loads applied to the workshop, is matched with concurrent control system data to find the answers. The tests will clear up many uncertainties about crew motion effects and will influence the design of spacecraft of tomorrow. The subject of attitude and control became a more immediate concern during the second scheduled EVA. Skylab's rate gyro system, which instructs the computer as to the amount of attitude drift, had a faulty gyro package. Jack Lausma would install a new one. The package was installed and placed online. Within minutes, the results were in. The EVA lasted four and a half hours. All tasks were successfully performed. Early next day, the crew set a record for the longest manned space flight. They had already traveled 11 and a half million miles. What's more, productivity was at an all-time high. They were now running well ahead of schedule and even requesting jobs to increase the daily workload. One such task was the behavior of bubbles in 0G. The oscillations are much less damp. It exhibits almost all of the pre-modes of oscillation that you would expect for more liquid like that. You will spin up those oscillations again by just blowing an air jet. There were also demonstrations of angular momentum, magnetic effects, a wielder force pendulum. There was even an attempt to find out about the aerodynamics of a paper airplane without gravity. It's welding good. That doesn't look like a welding good. We have a land that we can grow perfectly out of. Presents of gravity and we're examining that. While most of the time was devoted to experimentation, a part of the astronauts' day was spent on the more mundane aspects of living. There were meals to prepare, cleaning, taking out the garbage, equipment repairs, personal hygiene, and always the exercise. Although a few hours away from the routine was rare, it usually found expression in the novelty of 0G. By mid-September, it became apparent that the rescue mission would not be flown. Analysis had shown that command module alternate control modes were more than adequate for the orbit, and the condition had remained stable. In addition, contingency plans were defined for the defective quad thrusters in the unlikely event they would be required. It looked like a nominal mission all the way. Skylab cameras, meanwhile, maintained a steady flow of pictorial data, such as Earth's horizon air glow. These photos will tell scientists about the behavior of ozone, and its importance to the thermal balance of the atmosphere. For the science of meteorology, strong weather systems were closely documented. As were these very striking wind convection patterns, volcanoes, they were photographed around the world to perhaps form a basis for predicting volcanic activity. The Alps, the Straits of Magellan, Italy, Gibraltar, Washington Baltimore, the Grand Canyon, Cape Cod, the Drought Area of Africa. From handheld and Earth resources cameras, our planet was photographically documented as never before. Number 25th, Mission Day 60. And for this mission, time had about expired. Recovery would be off Southern California by the USS New Orleans. The scientific journey had ends, gravitational pull. One where your legs feel strong enough, and it doesn't feel like it's too heavy to move your body, but I think your lateral balance is sort of funny. We didn't seem to have much problem with wanting to pitch forward or backwards. It was mostly the sideways correction. It would take a couple of days for the crew to regain their steadiness, a normal part of the readaptive process. Many hours of medical tests would follow in which all data would be within normal limits. Long-term medical effects would take several weeks to analyze, but for now, they felt well. Their spirits were high, and they looked forward to home and family. I didn't know we had so many friends. I'm glad to see y'all here today. Reunion took place at Houston's Ellington Air Force Base amid welcome home ceremonies, just as they will for many months to come. The crew attempted to share some of their experiences, experiences out of which a store of knowledge was gleaned that will shed new light on our troubled planet, and experiences that have served as a proving ground for the next Skylab mission and for our future course in space. He's in space right now. He's in space to stay. He will always be in space in the future. The business we're in at the moment right now is trying to develop the abilities to carry out these explorations and advancements that are sure to come. It may not be five years from now or 10 or 15, but if we could all return to the Earth a thousand years from now, we'd find that there are many people here, but there are people that have gone from this Earth to the other planets of the Solar System and perhaps even the other stars. He's embarked on a most fantastic journey and it will never end.