New Crisis in Space

After their difficult and dangerous attempts to dock with and repair the first U.S. space laboratory finally succeeded, the Skylab 1 astronauts last week settled down to work in their cavernous home in the sky. They made scientific observations of the earth and sun, performed biomedical tests on themselves, and even feasted on some of the foods that NASA had feared would spoil in Skylab's scorching temperatures. The outlook seemed bright. Asked whether they expected to remain aloft for a full 28-day mission, Commander Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. replied unhesitatingly: "You betcha!"

Conrad's optimism was short-lived. Before the week ended, a second critical storage battery had failed, further depleting Skylab's already reduced power supply. After an emergency meeting in Houston, top NASA officials concluded that there was only one hope. To provide more electrical power, the astronauts would have to take a space walk outside the ship this week and attempt to free the inoperative solar panel that remains jammed in the side of the orbital workshop (the other workshop panel was ripped off completely during Skylab's launch).

The renewed crisis occurred after the astronauts thought they had their electrical problems well in hand. Power available from the four working windmill-shaped solar wings atop Skylab's telescope mount, and from fuel cells in the adjoining Apollo command module, was only about half what scientists had considered necessary for the mission. But by prudent rationing (turning off unnecessary lights, curtailing some experiments), the astronauts were able to perform most of their scheduled tasks. When they flipped Skylab over to begin earth-surveying photography with six high-resolution cameras, the functioning solar panels were turned away from the sun, forcing the spacecraft to rely temporarily on its storage batteries.

That eventually caused the opening of some circuit breakers, which are set to trip when 80% of a battery's power has been drained. Although the astronauts were able to recharge the batteries after Skylab resumed its normal orientation toward the sun, another battery --the second since launch--failed completely; still others were operating at much less than full power. The batteries had apparently been damaged both by high temperatures and by the added work load put on them.

Until the failure, it had seemed that the astronauts had triumphed over almost insurmountable difficulties. Finally docking with Skylab after five attempts, they had struggled for three hours in 125DEG temperatures to erect an umbrella-like sunshade over the area where Skylab had lost its micrometeoroid and thermal shielding. The makeshift solution worked. Within a few days, temperatures in the workshop dropped to the low 80s and the astronauts, who had been spending most of their time aboard the Apollo command module, could take up residence in Skylab.

Soon afterward, they successfully switched on the $ 121 million solar telescope array, opening the first manned observatory of the sun above the earth's obscuring atmosphere. They also began making visual and photographic reconnaissance of the earth below.

The astronauts' most significant observations were of their own physiological reactions to space. All three seemed to be adjusting well to weightlessness. Astronaut Joseph Kerwin, the first American doctor in space, discovered that "you do have a sense of up and down" in zero-G. Explained Kerwin: "You say to your brain: 'Brain, I want that way to be up,' and your brain says: 'O.K.' " Speculating about this unexpected phenomenon, Kerwin doubted that it was connected with the balance mechanism in the inner ear. "I think it's strictly eyeballs and brain," he said.

Under Kerwin's supervision, the crew conducted a host of biomedical tests--swirling about in a rotating chair to study disorientation in zero-G, climbing into a pressure chamber that measures the accumulation of blood in the lower body, contributing daily samples of blood (and freezing them) for laboratory analysis back on earth. Only Skylab's bicycle exerciser, designed to measure the astronauts' stamina, gave the crew any trouble. Confronted by the heat and some badly adjusted straps on the machine, Astronaut Paul Weitz found that pedaling was too exhausting and cut the experiment short. The astronauts also beamed a lively TV show to earth and showed off their ability at handstands, backflips and racing round the spacecraft.

Despite all the activity, prospects for completing the entire mission were still uncertain at week's end. Said Flight Controller M.P. Frank: "This may well be the last manned mission to Skylab. If we can't fix the solar panel, we might not be able to keep the lab alive long enough to get another crew up there." Indeed, as concern grew about possible further deterioration of the batteries, NASA advanced the launch date of the second Skylab crew from the originally scheduled Aug. 8 to July 27.

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