Scientific Investigations on the Skylab Satellite

Project Skylab began its life more than a decade ago when plans were made for operation in orbit of some small solar telescopes, packaged into an empty quadrant of the Apollo Service Module. Skylab ended its extremely productive life early in 1974, as the first true orbital station of the American space program, after giving shelter and life support to nine astronauts for a total of 12,000 man-hours and after producing an impressive wealth of scientific and technical data whose analysis will keep researchers occupied for many years to come.
Observation of the Sun and the stars, space physics studies, viewing and working in the novel environment of outer space represented the scientific program for Project Skylab. Each of these subprograms was successful; each provided a wealth of knowledge which leads into the next phase of the space program, a phase in which space flight is utilized to help meet the needs of human beings on Earth.

Now that man has begun to reach out into his space environment, modern civilization will benefit from space flight in many ways. This book is addressed especially at this time to the scientific community to stimulate innovative thinking on the opportunities for scientific research in space that will become broadly available when the space shuttle becomes operational in the late 1970's and the 1980 decade.

This volume contains most of the papers presented at the AIAA/AGU Conference on Scientific Experiments of Skylab held in Huntsville, Alabama, October 30-November 1, 1974. It covers a wide range of Skylab activities, including all the experiments of physical sciences as well as the planning, operations, and management phases. In addition, most of the student experiments are described in this volume.