1970–1985: Solar-System Firsts and Scientific Reach
STS-1 Columbia
First Space Shuttle flight; inaugurated reusable orbital spacecraft operations.
Era 2 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 12 Apr 1981
- Lead / partner
- United States
- Target
- Earth orbit
- Category
- Human spaceflight
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- unknown
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- Geocentric orbit
Why it happened
STS-1 Columbia flew during 1970–1985: Solar-System Firsts and Scientific Reach, as part of United States's work toward earth orbit. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
The full narrative of this mission is pending research and writing. What is recorded so far: First Space Shuttle flight; inaugurated reusable orbital spacecraft operations.
Results
First Space Shuttle flight; inaugurated reusable orbital spacecraft operations.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- Image credit: NASA · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-22)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog