Space research days in the space station, but this achievement was quickly overshadowed since the crew died on reentry to Earth. Salyut 1 was intentionally deorbited six months into orbit since it prematurely ran out of fuel. Skylab was the first American space station. It was 4 times larger than Salut 1. Skylab was launched in May 19, 1973. It rotated through three crews of three during its operational time. Skylab’s experiments confirmed coronal holes and were able to photograph eight solar flares. From 1986 to 2001, Russian space station Mir served as a permanent microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted
International Space Station Space Shuttle to dock to the space station. At that time, the Russian station "Mir" was still inhabited. The ISS remained unmanned for two years, while "Mir" was de-orbited. On 12 July 2000, "Zvezda" was launched into orbit. Preprogrammed commands on board deployed its solar arrays and communications antenna. It then became the passive target for a rendezvous with "Zarya" and "Unity": it maintained a station-keeping orbit while the "Zarya"-"Unity" vehicle performed the rendezvous and docking via ground control and the Russian automated rendezvous and docking system. "Zarya" computer transferred control of the station to "Zvezda" computer soon after docking.