The first spacewalk to conduct space station repairs
When Skylab launched on May 14, 1973, the space station’s micrometeoroid shield fell off and its solar arrays failed to deploy. Later that month, the arriving crew inspected the station, confirming that the shield was missing, along with one of the solar arrays. The remaining solar array hadn’t deployed, as it was pinned down by debris from the torn shield. The mission was off to a rocky start, but these setbacks led to the first repairs of a space station by spacewalkers.
On June 7, 1973, NASA astronauts Charles Conrad and Joseph Kerwin exited Skylab, spending 3 hours and 25 minutes performing the required fixes (it was the longest-ever spacewalk at the time). One particularly scary moment saw the astronauts thrown to space, the result of them freeing a stuck hinge, but tethers prevented them from floating away. As NASA writes, the “success of this repair EVA enabled NASA to plan with confidence the rest of the Skylab program that in terms of the amount and quality of research results obtained far exceeded preflight expectations.”
