Back to Earth
Skylab was never meant to come back down to Earth in one piece. In the summer of 1979, Skylab's imminent return to Earth via managed re-entry set off a fair amount of media hysteria. NASA's reassurances that the odds of human injury were just one in 152 did little to put the public's mind at peace. But some people used it as an excuse to throw a party (hard hats required), or sell t-shirts with bulls eyes.
Ground controllers set Skylab on a course to splash down 1300 kilometers (808 miles) south-southeast of Cape Town South Africa. Or so they thought. As a result of a miscalculation, Skylab overshot its target, and fragments of the craft rained down on remotely-populated western Australia on July 11. No one was injured.
The video above, from Australian television, includes some vintage clips of commentary from local residents. Below, an audio recording from an American radio station delivers the news as it happened.
