April 14, 1981: Landing of Columbia on STS-1

The first crew to inhabit Skylab — Conrad, Weitz and Kerwin — launched today in 1973 for a 28-day mission that successfully made critical repairs, brought the station into operation and conducted solar astronomy, Earth resources and medical experiments.

The crew of Space Shuttle mission STS 41-B provide an overview of their mission. Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center on February 3, 1984, and although the flight was marred by the failure of two commercial satellite deployments, astronaut Bruce McCandless made history by making the first untethered spacewalk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit jet pack.

#OTD…Launch of Atlantis in 1989 to send the Magellan space probe to Venus