Launch from Cape Canaveral (KSC); landing 1320 km southwest of San Diego in the Pacific Oecean.

This mission carried out the first crew of the Skylab space station. The flight became a "rescue mission" for the overheated space station, which had been damaged at its launch. Launched on May 25, 1973, the first Skylab crew's most urgent job was to repair the space station. Skylab's meteorite-and-sun shield and one of its solar arrays had torn loose during launch, and the remaining primary solar array was jammed. Without its shield, Skylab baked in the sunshine. The crew had to work fast, because high temperatures inside the workshop would release toxic materials and ruin on-board film and food

As Charles Conrad flew their Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) near the station, Paul Weitz unsuccessfully attempted to deploy the surviving solar array from the CSM's hatch while Joseph Kerwin held onto his legs. The astronauts found that their tools were inadequate, and had to use a backup method to dock the CSM to Skylab after several other methods failed. From inside, they deployed a collapsible parasol with telescoping rods as a replacement sunshade. The fix worked, and temperatures inside dropped low enough for the crew's comfort.

EVAs: Paul Weitz on May 25, 1973 (0h 35m) (first attempt to release to the solar panel - failed), Charles Conrad and Joseph Kerwin on June 07, 1973 (3h 23m) (successful release of the solar panel), Charles Conrad and Paul Weitz on June 19, 1973 (1h 36m) (replacement of film cartridges for solar camera). Substantial repairs, including deployment of a parasol sunshade, which brought the temperatures down to tolerable levels. Solar astronomy and Earth resources experiments and medical studies were performed. The sunshade had been built within 7 days.

For nearly a month they made further repairs to the workshop, conducted medical experiments, gathered solar and Earth science data, and performed a total of 392 hours of experiments. The mission tracked two minutes of a large solar flare with the Apollo Telescope Mount; they took and returned some 29,000 frames of film of the sun. The Skylab 2 astronauts spent 28 days in space, which doubled the previous U.S. record.

The recovery ship was the USS Ticonderoga.