On this day in space! July 11, 1979: Abandoned Skylab returns to Earth

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The abandoned space station spewed debris over Western Australia

A large space station with solar panels floats above an ocean
(Image credit: NASA)

On July 11, 1979, the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth as it burned up in the atmosphere, showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

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The last crew left the space station in 1974. Over time, it began to deorbit, slowly sinking closer and closer to Earth. Skylab actually fell back to Earth a little sooner than NASA anticipated. Strong solar storms were blamed for this premature plunge, because solar activity had warmed up Earth's atmosphere.

As pieces of Skylab broke up in the atmosphere, residents and pilots in the area saw dozens of colorful firework-like flares.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

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. 

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