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Skylab was the United States' first space station, and the second visited by a human crew after the Soviet Salyut 1. The only station NASA has launched independently, the 77-ton^[1] outpost was in Earth orbit from 1973 to 1979 and was visited by crews three times between 1973 and 1974. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, and manned missions to the station were made by a Command/Service Module (CSM) atop the smaller Saturn IB. During its operational life, numerous scientific experiments were conducted, and crews were able to confirm the existence of coronal holes in the Sun. Before plans to refurbish and reuse Skylab with the Space Shuttle could begin, the station reentered Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated in 1979, with debris striking portions of Western Australia.