OTD…July 15 and STS-127

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.

The final manned Mercury mission was launched atop an Atlas rocket on this day in 1963 with Gordon Cooper aboard Faith 7 for a 34-hour, 22-orbit flight.

#OTD in 1997…Atlantis launched on the seventh joint docking mission with Russia’s space station Mir