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| The Second Manned Skylab
Mission (SL-3)
The second Skylab crew not only completed all of its planned experiments, it was actually able to complete some experiments that had been scheduled for another mission. Where 26 Earth resources experiment passes had been planned, 39 were actually accomplished. Data included photographing the developing and decaying stages of tropical storm Christine, the active volcano Etna, a fishing operation in the Gulf of Mexico, and an Arizona ecological test site. 206 hours of solar viewing had been planned, but 305 were actually logged, including two major solar flares and numerous coronal transients. 333 medical experiments were conducted, six more than had been originally planned, including the first orbital demonstration of astronaut manuevering equipment. The only class of experiments that ran behind schedule were student investigations -- only 10 of the planned 12 were completed. One of the completed investigations involved two spiders -- Arabella and Anita -- that were orbited to determine their ability to spin a web without the influence of gravity. After a number of shaky starts, Arabella produced an Earth-like web of creditable symmetry. Anita adapted more quickly and spun good webs after just a few false starts.
The second mission came to an end when the crew splashed down 59 days 11 hours and 9 minutes after lift-off, about 225 miles southwest of San Diego. Questions or comments about this page?
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lifted off at 6:11 am CDT July 28, 1973, with
crewmembers 
Three EVA sessions were undertaken during the
59-day mission. The first was a marathon 6-hour,
31-minute excursion to deploy an experiment, install
solar telescope film, and augment the parasol with the
twin-pole sunshade. The second was 4 hours 30 minutes to
change film, deploy experiments, and replace some gyros.
The third EVA was a 2-hour 42-minute excursion to
retrieve film and experiment samples.
Other
experiments involved substantial numbers of people from
various organizations. In Skylab's Earth resources
experiments alone there were some 100 American and 42
foreign academic investigators, industrial investigators,
and state, federal, and foreign government agency
representatives.
