August 3, 2025
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Breaking News
  • [ August 1, 2025 ] NASA, SpaceX ‘thread the clouds’ to launch Crew-11 to the International Space Station Falcon 9
  • [ July 31, 2025 ] Launch preview: SpaceX, NASA launches Crew-11 following 1-day weather scrub Falcon 9
  • [ July 29, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Falcon 9
  • [ July 28, 2025 ] SpaceX, NASA conduct static fire test of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the Crew-11 launch Falcon 9
  • [ July 26, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites into a polar orbit Falcon 9

Bob Crippen

News

April 12 marks 60 years since Gagarin’s spaceflight, 40 years since shuttle debut

April 12, 2021 Stephen Clark

Sixty years ago Monday, a 27-year-old Russian test pilot named Yuri Gagarin strapped into a Vostok capsule in Central Asia and rode into orbit atop a launcher derived from a Soviet nuclear missile, becoming the first human to travel into the void of space. Twenty years later, in 1981, the era of reusable spacecraft dawned with the first launch of NASA’s space shuttle.

Video

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

April 14, 2016 Justin Ray

VIDEO: The winged spaceship Columbia returned to Earth with a pinpoint landing at Edwards Air Force Base on this day 35 years ago, concluding the maiden flight of the space shuttle.

News

April 12, 1981: 35 years since the maiden space shuttle launch

April 12, 2016 Justin Ray

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.

News Headlines

  • NASA, SpaceX ‘thread the clouds’ to launch Crew-11 to the International Space Station
    August 1, 2025
  • Launch preview: SpaceX, NASA launches Crew-11 following 1-day weather scrub
    July 31, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
    July 29, 2025
  • SpaceX, NASA conduct static fire test of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the Crew-11 launch
    July 28, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites into a polar orbit
    July 26, 2025
  • Crew-11 astronauts, cosmonaut arrive in Florida ahead of launch to the space station
    July 26, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
    July 25, 2025
  • Amazon says $139.5 million investment in Florida is key to ramping up launch cadence with Project Kuiper
    July 24, 2025
  • NASA probes to study how the solar wind triggers potentially dangerous ‘space weather’
    July 23, 2025
  • FAA: ‘Regional power outage’ causes last-minute scrub of NASA’s TRACERS mission
    July 22, 2025
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  • Members
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