Skylab IISkylab II
This mission once again more than doubled the previous endurance record in space, just set by the astronauts of Skylab I just a month earlier. After an early bout with motion sickness, the crew settled down for their two-month mission, deploying a second sun shield on a space walk lasting six hours, 30 minutes.
They conducted many experiments, and brought with them live spiders to conduct a student-designed experiment to see what kinds of webs the spiders would spin in weightlessness.
Also on this mission the astronauts finally got to test the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit, or AMU, which had initially been carried into space aboard Gemini IX but could not be tested then because of problems with the old Gemini space suit. The AMU experiments assisted engineers in designing the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which was first flown aboard the Shuttle flight STS 41B in February, 1984, and was still in use until quite recently.
