Space Shuttle Columbia STS-1

About the Mission

The first flight of the Space Shuttle, on April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Gagarin. John Young and Robert Crippen flew a vehicle that had never before been launched uncrewed. Young had walked on the Moon a decade earlier. Proved a winged orbiter could launch like a rocket and land like a glider. Hundreds of thousands of spectators watched in person.