Skylab's Grave: Remains of 1st American Space Station in Australia

NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, America's first space station, on Tuesday (May 14), but you might be surprised where this icon of U.S. human spaceflight ended up.

After hosting rotating astronaut crews from 1973-1974, the Skylab space station eventually fell back to Earth in pieces that landed in Australia. Now, decades later, many of those pieces are on display at Australian museums, offering a fascinating glimpse into America's first stab at living in space.

From May 1973 to February 1974, Skylabsaw a trio of three-man crews take up residence aboard the outpost, before it was abandoned with the plan of possibly using the space shuttle (then under development) to reactivate the laboratory. But with no way to reboost Skylab to a higher orbit to keep it aloft, and delays in getting the shuttle off the ground , the space station re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Indian Ocean in 1979, with pieces landing inland along the south coast of Western Australia. [See more photos of Skylab's remains in Australia]

The mostly uncontrolled re-entry was a media sensation at the time, with newspapers offering prizes for the first debris found and to persons impacted by falling pieces. NASA's attempt at sending Skylab into the Indian Ocean, out of harm's way, proved only somewhat successful, and the spacecraft entered several minutes earlier than predicted, slightly off course.

Several large chunks and dozens of smaller pieces of Skylab survived the fiery plunge through the atmosphere and impacted the ground in the Australian outback over a large swath centered around the community of Balladonia on the Nullarbor Plain. The largest pieces included the oxygen tanks designed to keep the crew alive during their stays.

Skylab on display

Visitors can almost miss Skylab. Tucked away in a large display case in a small city museum, the remains of what fell from the sky on July 11, 1979, can be found in Esperance, a port town with less than 10,000 inhabitants located 450 miles from Perth, which is the only major city in the western half of the sparsely populated country. Esperance was directly under the path of Skylab's re-entry. [How NASA's Skylab Space Station Worked (Infographic)]

On the outside, the corrugated metal walls and roof of the museum have the appearance of four long warehouses. That's because the Esperance Municipal Museum, founded in 1976 on the site of a former railroad yard, is composed of converted train equipment sheds.

From the main road along the waterfront in Esperance, a small blue and yellow sign hung on the side of the building is all that denotes it as a "museum," and a larger hanging billboard makes note of the main attraction inside: "In 1979, a spaceship crashed over Esperance. We fined them $400 for littering." A stamp next to it reads, "PAID IN FULL."

It's true. The local government slapped NASA with a comical $400 bill for the cleanup, though the U.S. space agency never officially paid up. However, on the 30th anniversary of the crash in 2009, a radio host for Highway Radio in California and Nevada used his program to raise the funds and put a formal end to the complaint. The paycheck now hangs above the remains.

Spacecraft remains

Around the front of the museum, a large model of the space station sits at a sharp angle atop a pedestal. A plaque on the side describes the space station and what happened along this lonely coastline a few decades ago.

Inside, most of what remains of Skylab can be found in a large Plexiglas-enclosed display case. The largest oxygen tank sits on the floor adjacent to it, wrapped in plastic. Inside the case, the largest intact pieces are displayed at center. These include the space station's storage freezer for food and other items, a water tank, nitrogen spheres for the station’s attitude control system thrusters and a piece of what is identified as a portion of the hatch the astronauts would have crawled through during their visits. Many smaller pieces of debris are laid out around the larger chunks, each labeled and identified where possible.

Several news articles and photographs circle the case, including photos showing the actual re-entry taken by locals and one featured in a National Geographic story from October 1979. The oversized check created by the Nevada radio station, which was used to pay the litter fine, sits proudly above it, and a proclamation from Barstow proclaiming July 13, 2009, as "Shire of Esperance/Skylab Day" lies mounted on a plaque alongside a key to the city.

Portions of the debris were sent elsewhere to be displayed, such as in the United States and Sydney. And it is possible that other pieces of debris remain in the remote outback, still waiting to be found.

If you visit Skylab

If you are visiting Western Australia, the Esperance Municipal Museum is located on James Street, between the waterfront Esplanade and Dempster Street. There is a $4 admission fee. Allow 30 minutes if your goal is to see Skylab only.

Another of the large oxygen tanks that survived Skylab's fall to Earth is on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney also a portion of a titanium sphere in its collection, but it is not believed to be on display right now.

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• Skylab: The First U.S. Space Station (Photos)
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In Cuba, much work remains 6 months after Sandy

HAVANA (AP) — Many people in eastern Cuba are still living with family or in houses covered by flimsy makeshift rooftops six months after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the island's eastern provinces, residents and aid workers said Thursday.

Many praised the government's efforts to rebuild Santiago and other cities but said much work remains to recover from the storm, which caused 11 deaths in Cuba before raging up the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard and killing 72.

"It was very hard-hit, but Santiago is once again blossoming," Aristides Zayas, a receptionist in Santiago said in a phone interview. "Of course the magnitude was such that not everything can get off the ground in six months. It will take time."

The half-year mark comes amid preparations for similar commemoration by states up and down the U.S. East Coast, where Sandy blew ashore in New Jersey on Oct. 29 as a monster storm that resulted in billions of dollars in damage.

Sandy had raked eastern Cuba four days earlier, causing major crop losses and damaging an estimated 130,000 to 200,000 homes. The government has not said how many of those have yet to be repaired or rebuilt.

Cuban scientists say Sandy's surge penetrated 50 yards (meters) inland and permanently altered much of the eastern coastline, washing away entire beaches and depositing sand elsewhere.

Shortly after the storm hit, Cuban President Raul Castro visited Santiago and said the city looked like it had been "bombed."

Cuba's highly organized civil defense brigades mobilized to get newly homeless people into shelters, distribute food and water and replant uprooted trees. Authorities also extended loans for rebuilding and knocked 50 percent off the price of home materials for storm victims.

Communist Party newspaper Granma said Thursday that for visitors today, "the first thing that catches one's attention and impresses ... is to find a clean and well-ordered city."

But residents said problems remain.

"From what I hear some things are still lacking," said Sister Mirtha, a Roman Catholic nun in the town of El Cobre, 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Santiago. "Some people have roofs, but others still do not. There are people who are getting rained on, and it's thanks to neighbors that they have somewhere to go."

She said some who live in informal housing situations have had difficulty getting their hands on building materials, because residents are required to show property titles to get the discounted items.

An international aid worker who has been closely involved in the relief effort said construction materials like bricks and corrugated iron rooftops are in short supply since local production is not meeting demand, and many items must be imported. Some families have moved back into damaged homes with just plastic sheets covering the roofs.

"They've done really well on re-establishing access to services like electricity and water, reopening roads, clearing out trees that have fallen down," the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to maintain the organization's relationship with island authorities. "All of that was quite quick given the scale of the impact."

"But at the individual level there's still a lot of work that needs to be done ... and my sense is that the government can't tend to every family's individual needs."

State-run news agency Prensa Latina reported this week that Santiago provincial authorities are prioritizing construction to make sure everyone displaced by Sandy has a safe place to live, a mission that takes on more urgency with the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season set to begin June 1.

There's also still plenty of work for international aid groups, which are continuing to distribute things like water tanks, purification tablets, mattresses, sheets, towels and other household goods.

"There's still a lot of families that are living in very precarious situations," the aid worker said. "Now that's a bit of a concern, because the rainy season's coming and you want to make sure that people have proper shelter."

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Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez in Havana contributed to this report.

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Congo warlord Bosco Ntaganda remains at US Embassy

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Wanted on an international warrant for alleged war crimes, Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda lived openly in Congo for years, playing tennis at exclusive clubs and dining at lakeside restaurants in full view of foreign diplomats and U.N. peacekeepers.

That all ended when the 39-year-old known as "The Terminator" suddenly turned himself in Monday to the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda and asked to be handed over to the International Criminal Court — a surprise move that followed a split in Ntaganda's rebel group and apparent loss of support from his backers in the Rwandan government.

"My best guess is that his options came down to go to The Hague or be killed," Tony Gambino, the former director of USAID in Congo, said of the about-face by Ntaganda, one of Africa's most-wanted men.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday that Ntaganda would remain at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali while U.S. officials worked to "facilitate his transfer to The Hague at his own request."

Noting that Rwanda's Justice Ministry had promised safe passage, she said, "now it's a matter of working out the modalities, and that's going to take a little time."

Ntaganda, an ethnic Tutsi, was first indicted in 2006 by the ICC for allegedly building an army of child soldiers during a 2002-2003 conflict in Congo's eastern Ituri province. A second arrest warrant issued last July accused him of a range of crimes, including murder, rape, sexual slavery and pillaging.

Those who until recently fought alongside him say that Ntaganda fled Congo over the weekend after his men lost a key battle against fighters who split off last month from his M23 rebel movement.

Ntaganda was long believed to have been backed by Rwanda, which provided financial and logistical support to the ethnic Tutsi rebels he commanded in Congo's mineral-rich east.

After the rebels seized the Congolese city of Goma in November, U.N. investigators issued a day-by-day outline of the invasion, detailing how Rwanda equipped, trained, advised, reinforced and directly commanded the rebellion, including sending four companies from Rwanda's 305th brigade across the border to conduct operations.

Rwanda has fiercely denied the accusations, but several countries including the United States and Britain cut off aid to Congo's smaller, but more developed neighbor as a result.

Ntaganda became more vulnerable last month when the M23 split into two camps over the decision to bow to international pressure and withdraw from Goma late last year.

Ntaganda and another rebel leader, Jean-Marie Runiga, had opposed any pullout, but a rebel general, Sultani Makenga, ordered a retreat and initiated peace talks with the Congo government.

After entering Rwanda in the pre-dawn hours Saturday, Ntaganda tried to reach out to his backers in the Rwandan army, said Stanislas Baleke, a political official in the M23 movement who has links to Ntaganda. "But once he was in Rwanda they told him they could not guarantee his security," Baleke said.

Ntaganda was then told by his Rwandan contacts to go to the U.S. Embassy, he said, noting that the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and has no obligation to hand Ntaganda over to the court.

Nuland said the U.S. had no prior contact with Ntaganda or advance notice that he would turn up at the embassy. "It was a walk-in in the truest sense of the word," she said.

She declined to say why he chose the U.S. Embassy or whether he may have feared for his safety.

"I'm going to let him speak to his motives," she said. "He has now asked to go The Hague. That's a good thing we're trying to facilitate."

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Gouby reported from Goma, Congo. Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Michelle Faul in Johannesburg and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

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