OTD…July 4 and STS-121

Former astronaut Piers Sellers, a British-born climate scientist who flew on three space shuttle missions to help construct the International Space Station, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61.

#OTD in 1989…Columbia launched with a classified communications satellite for the Defense Department

#OTD…The first launch of Challenger in 1983 and Columbia’s shortened Spacelab mission in 1997