Skylab plunges to Earth

The plan was to keep Skylab going until the shuttles could reach it and bring it back into service, but once its batteries ran out it lacked the power to keep it in orbit and its orbit began to decay. An increase in sunspot activity warmed up the earth’s atmospher, which expanded until it reached Skylab. On 12 July 1979 the big solar panels were torn off as Skylab spun and twisted, its final throes following shortly after.

Hamish Lindsay, a member of the NASA tracking team in Australia, described Skylab’s final throes:

They began 111 kilometres over Ascension Island in the Atlantic when the radar station there spotted the big solar panels begin to tear off as the lifeless hulk spun and twisted out of control. “It’s now out of range of all our tracking stations,” said NASA. “The crash line is from Esperance in Western Australia to Cape York in Queensland. The chances of anybody coming to harm are minimal, but people are advised to stay indoors.”

During Skylab’s last week in space, the Australian Federal Government set up a special Skylab Communications Centre in the Deakin Telephone Exchange in Canberra. Manned by about 12 officials from five departments, it monitored every move Skylab made over a hotline from Washington. Police and emergency services around Australia were put on alert. People all around the Earth under its flight path nervously wondered.

In the United States all aircraft in the north‑eastern and north‑western areas were grounded as Skylab passed overhead for the last time. Four hundred members of the world’s media had gathered at NASA Headquarters in Washington where a statement was issued that Skylab had come down safely in the Indian Ocean, calculated from the last radar tracks.

Some celebrations had already begun in America for the safe ending of Skylab.

Then, quite unexpectedly, there were disjointed reports from around the desert 800 kilometres behind Perth. “There have been reports of sightings of fragments over Australia – from Kalgoorlie, Esperance, Albany and Perth,” NASA officials announced. In the middle of winding up the story on the end of Skylab the journalists at NASA headquarters in Washington were electrified into action: “Where’s Albany?” “How do you spell Kalgoorlie?” “Where’s this Perth?” and suddenly the sleepy little outback towns of Kalgoorlie, Albany, Rawlinna, and Balladonia were thrust into the world’s major newspaper and media headlines.

Captain Bill Anderson was flying his Fokker Friendship 200 kilometres east of Perth on his final approach to Perth airport when his First Officer Jim Graham saw a blue light through his left window. Anderson recalls, “We first saw it at 12:35 local (Perth) time – we would have watched it for about 45 seconds. I had the impression it was a bubble shape. As it descended it changed from a bright blue to an almost orange‑red and you could see the breakup start to occur. It finished up as a very bright orange ball in the front, and the remainder behind giving off sparks. It was a very long tail, perhaps several hundred miles long.”

Bradley Smith, an employee at Perth’s Bickley Observatory, described his sighting. “We first saw it as a light behind the clouds. It was travelling from south to east about 90 above the horizon. If you can imagine a train on fire with bits of burning fire all the way down the carriages that’s what it was like.”

John Seiler, managing the remote sheep and cattle station of Noondoonia 850 kilometres east of Perth saw the final moments of Skylab with his wife Elizabeth. “I was watching for it – and saw it coming straight for us. It was an incredible sight – hundreds of shining lights dropping all around the homestead. They were white as they headed for us, but as they began dropping the pieces turned a dull red.

“The horses on the property ran mad. They galloped all over the place, and the dogs were barking. We couldn’t calm them down. Then we could hear the noise of wind in the air as bigger pieces passed over us – all the time there was a tremendous sonic boom – it must have lasted about a minute. Just after the last pieces dropped out of sight, the whole house shook three times. It must have been the biggest pieces crashing down. Afterwards there was a burning smell like burnt earth.”

NASA officially revised its re‑entry bulletin to: “Skylab re‑entered the atmosphere at altitude of 10 kilometres at 2:37 a.m. (Eastern Australian time) at 31.80 S and 124.40 E – just above the tiny Nullarbor Plain town of Balladonia.” Burning pieces of Skylab were scattered over an area 64 kilometres wide by 3,860 kilometres along the flight path.