STS-135 crew module camera: astronauts rocket off the launch pad

On the 35th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch, the last remaining external fuel tank set sail today from its factory in New Orleans to Los Angeles and a remarkable museum attraction in the making.

Watch the first spacecraft in a new generation of Russian Progress cargo vehicles arrive at the International Space Station on December 23, 2015, bringing a holiday delivery of more than 5,000 pounds of fuel, water and supplies for the research lab’s six-person crew.

Sixty years ago Monday, a 27-year-old Russian test pilot named Yuri Gagarin strapped into a Vostok capsule in Central Asia and rode into orbit atop a launcher derived from a Soviet nuclear missile, becoming the first human to travel into the void of space. Twenty years later, in 1981, the era of reusable spacecraft dawned with the first launch of NASA’s space shuttle.