Published May 16, 2013
It's been about 40 years since people attempted to answer the question, "can human beings adapt to long-term life in space?" There have been huge leaps since the world's first space station, a Soviet module that hosted a crew of cosmonauts for three weeks in 1971. The U.S. space agency, NASA, says the first U.S. effort, Skylab, laid the groundwork for the International Space Station that orbits above us today. VOA's Suzanne Presto in Washington has more about what Skylab achieved before its mission ended and it plummeted to Earth in 1979.