Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma First Spacewalked Aug. 6, 1973

Summary: Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma first spacewalked Aug. 6, 1973, as scientist-pilot and mission pilot, respectively, on the Skylab 3 mission.

Skylab 3 scientist-pilot Owen Garriott spacewalks at the Skylab space station’s Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) during the mission's first extravehicular activity (EVA) Monday, Aug. 6, 1973; photographed with hand-held 70mm Hasselblad camera; NASA ID SL3-115-01837: NASA, Public Domain, via NASA

Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma first spacewalked Aug. 6, 1973, as scientist-pilot and mission pilot, respectively, on Skylab 3, the second manned mission to Skylab, the first United States space station.

Their first spacewalk lasted 6 hours 31 minutes. The walk began Monday, Aug. 6, at 17:30 Coordinated Universal Time (1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). The duo completed their first career spacewalk Tuesday, Aug. 7, at 00:01 UTC (Monday, Aug. 6, at 8:01 p.m. EDT).

The spacewalk, termed scientifically as extravehicular activity (EVA), involved installing fresh film canisters at the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) and deploying a twin-pole sunshade over the space station’s parasol. NASA Communications Strategist Melanie Whiting described the deployment process in her 2018 Skylab mini-series: “Garriott assembled the two poles, each consisting of 11 5-foot segments, and passed them to Lousma who attached them to a base plate he had installed on a handrail. Lousma then unfurled the sunshade and swiveled it to cover the station. Internal temperatures aboard Skylab dropped almost immediately into a more comfortable range."

Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC; now Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, had collaborated on designing and constructing two sunshields, the parasol and the twin-pole sunshade, for the Skylab space station. The sunshields remedied the loss of the Skylab space station’s thermal protection. NASA had launched Skylab Monday, May 14, 1973, at 17:30:00 UTC (1:30 p.m. EDT). Only 63 seconds after liftoff, the station’s micrometeoroid shield had deployed prematurely, and then had been torn off by aerodynamic forces.

The Apollo CSM (Command and Service Module) 116 had delivered the specially constructed sunshields to Skylab as part of the Skylab 2 mission, the first manned mission to the space station. The Skylab 2 mission launched Friday, May 25, 1973, from Cape Canaveral’s LC (Launch Complex)-39B. The mission’s three-astronaut crew comprised Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. (June 2, 1930-July 8, 1999) as Commander, Joseph Peter Kerwin (born Feb. 19, 1932) as scientist-pilot and Paul Joseph Weitz (July 25, 1932-Oct. 22, 2017) as the mission’s pilot.

The Skylab 2 mission began deployment of the collapsible parasol through the station’s small solar scientific airlock Saturday, May 26, at 21:00:00 UTC (5 p.m. EDT), according to Mark Wade’s space travel-themed website, Astronautix (Encyclopedia Astronautica). Deployment was completed two and one-half hours later, at 19:30:00 UTC (7:30 p.m. EDT).

The Skylab 2 crew did not deploy the second sunshield, the twin-pole sunshade. NASA managers made the decision to defer deployment of the twin-pole sunshade until the Skylab 3 mission. NASA's Melanie Whiting explained in her 2018 Skylab mini-series that deploying the twin-pole sunshade “. . . required a complex spacewalk to install, and that crew had time to train in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (NBS) at MSFC.”

The Skylab Operations Summary by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Public Affairs Office (PAO) recognized the “installed twinpole solar shield on EVA” as one of three “mission achievements” by the SL-3 (Skylab 3) mission. Second and third achievements were detailed as “performed major inflight maintenance” and “doubled previous length of time in space.”

The Skylab 3 mission’s first spacewalk had originally been planned for Tuesday, July 31. However, the walk was delayed because the three-astronaut crew suffered from space motion sickness during the first few days onboard the space station. Eight hours 26 minutes 10 seconds after the mission’s launch Saturday, July 28, at 11:10:50 UTC (7:10 a.m. EDT) from east central Florida’s Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral since Oct. 9, 1973), the three astronaut crew, comprising Commander Alan Bean (March 15, 1932-May 26, 2018), scientist-pilot Owen Garriott (Nov. 22, 1930-April 15, 2019) and mission pilot Jack Lousma (born Feb. 29, 1936), had docked Apollo CSM (Command and Service Module) 117 at the Skylab space station, at 19:37:00 UTC (3:37 p.m. EDT).

Skylab 3 mission’s scientist-pilot and mission pilot logged a second spacewalk Friday, Aug. 24. The mission’s third and final spacewalk, which took place Saturday, Sept. 22, was conducted by Owen Garriott and Commander Alan Bean. With the third spacewalk, Owen Garriott claimed the most number of spacewalks for the Skylab 3 mission. Jack Lousma placed second as participant in two of the mission’s spacewalks. Fourth moonwalker Alan Bean’s single spacewalk for the Skylab 3 mission numbered as his third and last career spacewalk.

The takeaway for Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma achieving their first spacewalks Aug. 6, 1973, on the Skylab 3 mission is that the neophyte spacewalkers’ deployment of a specially-designed twin-pole sunshade garnered recognition by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Public Affairs Office as the first of three mission accomplishments.

Skylab 3 mission pilot Jack Lousma deployed the twin-pole solar shield for the Skylab space station’s Orbital Workshop (OWS) for his first spacewalk, Aug. 6, 1973, which he made with fellow first spacewalker Owen Garriott; NASA ID 7200359: NASA, Public Domain via NASA

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Skylab 3 scientist-pilot Owen Garriott spacewalks at the Skylab space station’s Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) after mounting the Skylab Particle Collection S149 Experiment on one of the ATM solar panels; the experiment purposed to study impact phenomena of interplanetary dust particles on prepared surfaces; photographed with hand-held 70mm Hasselblad camera; NASA ID SL3-115-01837: NASA, Public Domain, via NASA @ https://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/skylab2.html; Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details/SL3-115-01837

Skylab 3 mission pilot Jack Lousma deployed the twin-pole solar shield for the Skylab space station’s Orbital Workshop (OWS) for his first spacewalk, Aug. 6, 1973, which he made with fellow first spacewalker Owen Garriott; NASA ID 7200359: NASA, Public Domain via NASA @ https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacesuits/historygallery/sky-aug73b.html; Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details/7200359

For further information:

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