Skylab and the Sun: ATM

Public-outreach brochure on the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM), Skylab’s solar observatory, issued July 1973. In his preface, L. N. Werner of the Skylab Program Office describes the booklet’s purpose as familiarizing readers with the Sun and what NASA expected to learn by observing it, with articles contributed by scientists, astronauts, and engineers associated with the ATM Program.

ATM Program Manager Dixon L. Forsythe’s foreword frames the mission historically, from Galileo’s earliest telescopic observations of the Sun through the development of the ATM’s five large experiment telescope packages, capable of simultaneous solar viewing across different wavelengths from above the disrupting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, and predicts the first ATM mission “may well be the beginning of the modern era of astronomy.”

The table of contents lays out the full structure — The Skylab Program, The Sun, Solar Studies in Perspective, Skylab Solar Studies (the ATM Solar Observatory, its scientific instruments, crew operations and training, and the Joint Observing Program), and Skylab Associated Solar Programs (Coordinated Observing, Guest Observer, Ground Astronomy, Solar X-ray Spectroscopy, the ATM Calibration Rocket Program, and NOAA Solar Forecast Services) — followed by an appendix on accessing scientific data and participating as a coordinated or guest observer.

The opening chapter recaps the Skylab station itself: a 100-ton orbital complex supporting more than 50 research programs, and the two-vehicle launch profile pairing a Saturn V-launched workshop with Saturn IB-launched crews.