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Program archive
Skylab
Skylab transformed Apollo-era hardware into America’s first and showed how crews could repair, inhabit, and use an orbital laboratory for long-duration science.
- Missions
- 4
- People
- 9
- Vehicles
- 12
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Choose a path through the Skylab archive.
Living and working in orbit
Skylab transformed Apollo-era hardware into America’s first and showed how crews could repair, inhabit, and use an orbital laboratory for long-duration science.
Program details1973NASA · 1973–1979
Flight record4 flights3 crewed · 1 uncrewed
First flown missionSkylab 1May 14, 1973
Latest flown missionSkylab 4November 16, 1973
Core capabilities
Program story
Skylab grew from efforts to reuse Apollo hardware as a crewed orbital workshop. NASA launched the station on the final Saturn V in May 1973, but damage during ascent tore away a micrometeoroid shield and one solar array while trapping another.
The first crew arrived prepared for an improvised rescue. They deployed a replacement sunshade and freed the remaining solar array, turning a nearly lost station into a functioning laboratory. Two later crews expanded the record for time in space and continued a broad program of solar, Earth, medical, and materials research.
Three crews occupied Skylab for a combined 171 days. Their repairs, long-duration operations, and scientific work established lessons that carried forward into Shuttle laboratories, Mir cooperation, and the International Space Station.
Names, numbers, and patches
Why Skylab’s mission numbers do not match the patches
NASA’s official launch sequence counted the uncrewed space-station launch as Skylab 1, followed by the three crewed flights as Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. The crews and some contemporary mission documents instead numbered only the crewed expeditions, using Roman numerals I, II, and III on the crew patches.
FlightOfficial NASA nameCrew and patch name
Station launchOfficial NASA name · Skylab 1Crew and patch name · No crew-patch number
First resident crewOfficial NASA name · Skylab 2Crew and patch name · Skylab I
Second resident crewOfficial NASA name · Skylab 3Crew and patch name · Skylab II
Third resident crewOfficial NASA name · Skylab 4Crew and patch name · Skylab III
NASA says managers discovered the numbering miscommunication only after the crews’ clothing—with the differently numbered patches—had already been manufactured and stowed aboard the station. This archive uses NASA’s official Skylab 1–4 titles for its primary records while preserving Skylab I–III as historical aliases and patch designations.
NASA history of the Skylab mission patches and numbering →