John Young, veteran of the Apollo and Geminia space programs who had walked on the moon, commanded the flight with Robert Crippen, a rookie astronaut, as the pilot. The launch date coincided with the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight for the Soviet Union. It took off from Cape Canaveral and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The first flight of the Columbia occured from April 12 to April 14, 1981, encompassing two days and six hours. The Enterprise never had a mission into space. There were five free flight tests using the Enterprise before the first operational mission of the Columbia was launched in 1981. The first shuttle, Enterprise, was a test vehicle, taken into the skies by a 747 to test whether it could glide and land in 1977. The payload bay is sixty feet by fifteen feet. They are one hundred and eighty-four feet long with a wingspan of seventy-eight feet and weight, give or take depending on the mission, of 4.5 million pounds. The shuttles were eventually built by Rockwell International in Palmdale, California. The idea for a resuable craft had been around since the 1950's, although the plans and design for the actual space shuttle would start in 1968 with NASA's Integrated Launch and Re-entry Vehicle. One hundred and thirty-five missions were flown. Five shuttles capable of spaceflight were built Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor. And yes, there had been those grand achievements. Four decades of scientific experiments, in the shuttle bay and later Spacelab and the International Space Station. The program, which began in 1981 and included 135 missions, was completed when the Shuttle Atlantis flew its final mission to the International Space Station.įour decades of amazing achievements in space with the first reusable spacecraft, NASA's Space Shuttle program, shooting into orbit from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral from 1981 to 2011. JThe final shuttle flight lands at the Kennedy Space Center, signifying the end of the NASA shuttle space program. The Space Shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft to be flown into orbit, and it returned to earth for a traditional touch down landing two days later. Detail - 1981, 2011 ApThe first launch of the Space Shuttle from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center occurs as Columbia begins its STS-1 mission.
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