Columbia – Spaceflight Now

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.

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.

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.

Families, NASA honor fallen astronauts

January 28, 2016 William Harwood

On the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, crew families, friends and space workers gathered Thursday to remember the 17 men and women who lost their lives on the high frontier, 14 in two space shuttle disasters and three in an Apollo-era launch pad fire 49 years ago Wednesday.

Shuttle memorial honors crews, orbiters

June 27, 2015 William Harwood

In the first memorial of its kind, NASA and the families of the 14 men and women who lost their lives aboard the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 have joined together to remember the astronauts with pictures, personal mementos and, in an emotional first, iconic wreckage from both orbiters.