40 Years Ago: Skylab Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere

[Talyn]

On July 11, 1979, during its 34,981st orbit around the Earth, engineers in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston sent the final command to Skylab to turn off its control moment gyros, sending it into a slow tumble. This was the best that flight controllers could do to ensure that Skylab would not reenter over a populated area such as North America.

They expected that it would begin its breakup over the southern tip of Africa and fall into the Indian Ocean. As it happened, the breakup occurred slightly later and while the majority of the debris that survived reentry did fall into the Indian Ocean, some pieces fell over sparsely populated areas of southern Western Australia.

40 Years Ago: Skylab Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere - NASA

Skylab was America’s first space station and first crewed research laboratory in space. The complex consisted of four major components: the Orbital Workshop

www.nasa.gov

Archive footage of an Aussie baseball player trying to catch a piece of it.

 

[USMC6094]

So it did its homecoming in 1985?

Arithmetic don't match up here......

 

[Talyn]

If you click on the NASA link you'll see a born-on date for the article is JUL 11, 2019.

Yes the cumulative numbers of years are off, but nonetheless today is July 11 as was the day in 2019 of the article, and the day in 79 that Skylab came home.

 

[ECS686]

I remember that was like that decades Y2K scare, everyone went through a sky is falling craze (pun intended) where it was gonna destroy just their house LOL

 

[Shibadog]

I remember that was like that decades Y2K scare, everyone went through a sky is falling craze (pun intended) where it was gonna destroy just their house LOL

people are morons. They all think chicken little was right (“the sky is falling, the sky is falling”). Y2K, the TP rush in the pandemic, etc, etc.