NASA

Skylab 3

This 59-day mission saw the three person crew perform over 1,000 hours of science operations on Skylab and gather data on changes to and overall health of the human body on prolonged space missions. A second Apollo spacecraft was rolled out to the launch pad for potential rescue of the Skylab 3 crew when a fuel leak developed on two of the Apollo Service Module's thruster pods. A rescue was ultimately not needed. Observations of the Sun also continued on this Skylab mission. A spacewalk installed a more permanent and efficient debris and heat shield on the outside of the station.

The main Apollo spacecraft was a Command and Service Module designed to take three astronauts to and from the Moon’s orbit and provide access to the lunar lander during missions. After the Moon program ended, Apollo spacecraft flew three crews to the Skylab space station and performed the historic joint U.S.-Soviet mission in 1975.

Apollo

Two Araneus diadematus spiders

United States of America

Moonwalker

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

Moon Flyer

Apollo 12

The second human lunar landing. The Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket was struck by lightning twice during launch, the first time 36 seconds after liftoff. The first lightning strike caused a loss of almost all instrumentation in the Command Module and knocked all three fuel cells (critical to the mission) offline. Communication with Mission Control became garbled. A second lightning strike struck the rocket 52 seconds after liftoff. Thankfully, the Saturn V flight computer was isolated from the Apollo crew vehicle and kept flying perfectly. A single flight controller in Mission Control remembered a one-off test malfunction of the Command/Service Module signal conditioning electronics (SCE) assembly and made an on-the-fly, educated call to switch the SCE to its backup power source. The physical switch was unknown to the Flight Director and the mission's Commander. It was Lunar Module pilot Alan Bean who remembered the SCE to AUX button from a training incident a year prior when the same simulated failure occurred. After making it safely to Low Earth Orbit, the crew checked over the spacecraft, got the fuel cells back online, and confirmed there was not serious damage to systems. On the ground, flight controllers were worried the pyrotechnics on the parachutes may have fired when the lightning strikes occurred and would therefore not deploy on landing. Since nothing could be done about this, they sent Apollo 12 to the Moon without telling the crew. The mission safely landed very close to NASA's Survey 3 lunar lander; pieces of the probe were removed for return to Earth. After a successful mission, the crew returned to Earth; the parachutes worked perfectly.

Alan L. Bean

European Space Agency (ESA)

STS-9 (Columbia)

Germany

A dedicated science flight co-sponsored by NASA and ESA, STS-9 marked the first time an ESA/West German astronaut reached space and the first time a non-American launched on a U.S. mission.

The first reusable launch and landing spacecraft, the Space Shuttle began a new chapter of human space exploration. It launched like a rocket but landed on a runway like a plane. Shuttle crews deployed dozens of commercial satellites and two interplanetary probes to Venus and Jupiter. The Shuttle served as a mini space station and hosted hundreds of biomedical, psychological, physiological, materials science, and physics experiments that have directly benefited life on Earth. The five flight-worthy Shuttles -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions over 30 years. The Shuttles helped construct the Russian Mir space station and brought nearly 80% of the International Space Station to orbit. Shuttles also deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Shuttle

Owen K. Garriott

STS-3 (Columbia)

The third flight of the Space Shuttle was an eight day mission and an overwhelming success. The two-person crew tested the Shuttle's endurance on orbit and performed several science experiments. The mission is the only Shuttle flight to land in New Mexico instead of Florida or California and marked the first time a human spaceflight ended with a landing in New Mexico.

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