On this day in space! May 14, 1973: NASA launches Skylab space station

On May 14, 1973, NASA launched Skylab, the first American space station. Skylab orbited Earth for six years and supported three crewed missions during which astronauts conducted hundreds of science experiments.

Skylab was considered a success overall, but it got off to a pretty rocky start. It lifted off on a Saturn V rocket from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About a minute into the launch, its micrometeoroid shield accidentally deployed and flew off, and it took out one of the solar panels along the way. Debris from that accident then got stuck in another solar array and jammed it shut, leaving Skylab without any solar power.

A large white rocket with black stripes lifts off into a blue sky besides a red launch tower. — On May 14, 1973, NASA launched Skylab, the first American space station. (Image credit: NASA)

— Photos: Skylab, the 1st U.S. Space Station

— Space History Photo: Astronauts Play in Zero-G in Skylab

— Skylab: How NASA's First Space Station Worked (Infographic)

Thankfully, it still had fuel cells to keep it barely running until astronauts could come to save the day. But to make matters worse, the missing micrometeoroid shield was also designed to be a heat shield, so Skylab was getting dangerously hot.

The first crewed Skylab mission arrived 12 days later with a new replacement heat shade, and they were able to fix the jammed solar panel and get the station up and running.

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Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.