NASA Forgets Its Own History

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 20 December 2004, NASA HQ

"Today 27 years ago (1977) the Salyut-6 crew of Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko conducted the first "inspect/repair" EVA in history (and the first Russian spacewalk in nearly nine years), to check out the space station's forward docking port after a failed docking attempt by the Soyuz-25 spacecraft."

Editor's note: Jim Oberg notes: "NASA is overlooking U.S space history - the Skylab repair EVAs (1973)" Oberg is quite right. The EVAs conducted by the Skylab 2 crew were among the most daring and innovative ever conducted. The EVA repairs involved the erection of a solar parasol and the freeing of a large jammed PV array - which required brute strength on the part of the crew. This was done using tools and techniques developed from scratch - and involved things that had never been used before in space - and they were accomplished in 1973 - four years before the Salyut 6 event mentioned in this internal NASA report.