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Home -> Astronomy News -> Mission News -> 1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth
Post Info TOPIC: 1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth
Blobrana


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RE: 1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth
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Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports.
Ground controllers adjusted Skylab's orientation for ideal re-entry dynamics in the hours before reentry at approximately 16:37 UTC 11 July 1979. They aimed the station at a spot 1,300 kilometres south southeast of Cape Town, South Africa. The station did not burn up as fast as NASA expected, however. Due to a 4% calculation error, debris landed southeast of Perth, Western Australia, and was found between Esperance and Rawlinna, from 31° to 34°S and 122° to 126°E.
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Blobrana


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Skylab, the United States' first space station, was launched by a Saturn INT-21 rocket on the 14th May, 1973.

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Blobrana


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Skylab debris
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This Saturday marks 30 years since the United States' first space station, Skylab, fell out of orbit in 1979 and reentered the atmosphere. When it did, chunks of debris lit up the sky over the Indian Ocean and plunged into the water.
Some sizable pieces, however, rained down on the small coastal town of Esperance, Australia, and racked up a $400 "litter" fee that the shire of Esperance billed to NASA.
But nobodys paid the fine - until now.

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Blobrana


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RE: 1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth
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Skylab Launch



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Blobrana


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The US space laboratory, Skylab I, plunged to Earth this evening scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and sparsely populated Western Australia.
All week there has been mounting speculation over where the spacecraft would come down. It has been in orbit six years - for the past five of those it has been unoccupied.

Skylab's last signal was recorded at 1611 GMT. Less than an hour later a tracking station at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic confirmed the solar panels were beginning to peel off as the craft descended.

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