Carr was commander of Skylab 4 (third and final crewed visit to the Skylab Orbital Workshop) launched November 16, 1973, with splashdown on February 8, 1974. He was the first rookie astronaut to command a mission since Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 and was accompanied on the record-setting 34.5-million-mile flight by science pilot Dr. Edward Gibson and pilot William Pogue. The crew successfully completed 56 experiments, 26 science demonstrations, 15 subsystem-detailed objectives, and 13 student investigations during their 1,214 orbits of the Earth. They also acquired extensive Earth resources observation data using hand-held cameras and Skylab's Earth Resources Experiment Package camera and sensor array. They logged 338 hours of operations of the Apollo Telescope Mount, which made extensive observations of the sun's solar processes.