STS-104 Post-Flight Presentation

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.

Boeing engineers are outfitting two decommissioned space shuttle hangars at the Kennedy Space Center for the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane.

It was 1986 and the U.S. Air Force was on the cusp of something unprecedented in human spaceflight — launching a space shuttle crew from California and paving the way for people to fly true polar missions.