OTD…Sept. 12 and STS-48, 47 and 51

America’s first space shuttle launched on this day 35 years ago as the reusable flying machine, Columbia, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with John Young and Bob Crippen aboard.

#OTD in 1997…Discovery launched to deploy and later retrieve the CRISTA-SPAS atmospheric research satellite

#OTD in 1997…Columbia launched on the reflight of her shortened Microgravity Science Laboratory mission