As clouds of smoke billowed into the air, the first Space Shuttle rose from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981. The agency’s Space Shuttle team overcame years of setbacks and delays. The result was a first flight that met all the goals set for the mission. When astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen landed Columbia at Edwards Air Force Base two days later, it was called a “textbook flight.”
“I tell ya from up here the world is round. It is spectacular. It’s fantastic,” said Gemini XI command pilot Pete Conrad as he and pilot Dick Gordon looked down from their lofty vantage point. Their record-shattering altitude of 850 miles above the Earth was only one highlight of a demanding, three-day mission in September 1966 – 55 years ago.
In mid-1966, Gemini X continued advancing NASA’s capabilities for operating in space with a record-setting, three-day flight. Two astronauts completed rendezvous with two separate targets, retrieved an experiment package from one and set a new altitude record for human flight. All the objectives were designed as stepping stones in preparation for the Apollo Moon landings to follow.
In the moments following Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell’s report, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” things happened fast. Lovell and his crewmates, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, worked with the team in Mission Control to sort out the issues facing the mission. But, key members of that effort believe they also were aided by a Higher Power.
NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour first arrived at her home spaceport, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, on May 7, 1991. Following exactly one year of completing assembly, rigorous tests and processing, the newest orbiter “set sail”into the skies over the Atlantic Ocean. The maiden voyage marked one of the most dramatic examples of the value of humans in spaceflight.
After the Apollo command/service module was tested successfully in Earth orbit and on a trip to the Moon, NASA prepared for the next step, the first piloted flight test of the spacecraft designed to land on the lunar surface.