Space shuttle era launched 35 years ago
NASA’s space shuttle era took flight 35 years ago Tuesday with Columbia’s blastoff from Kennedy Space Center on one of the space program’s most daring test flights.
Commander John Young and pilot Bob Crippen lifted off from pad 39A at 7 a.m., on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human in space.
“And we have liftoff, liftoff of America’s first space shuttle,” said Hugh Harris of Cocoa Beach, NASA’s launch commentator. “And the shuttle has cleared the tower.”
The all-white shuttle, which had never flown before, immediately sustained damaged from the powerful pressure wave created by the twin solid rocket boosters.
The noise vibration rebounding off the launch pad dislodged 16 heat shielding tiles from the orbiter’s rear thrusters and dinged 128 more, and jarred other components.
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Despite those and other issues uncovered by the flight, Young and Crippen landed safely two days and 37 orbits later on a dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
“I think we have got something that is really going to mean something to the country and the world,” Crippen said during the mission, the first of 135 flown over the next three decades.
This July marks the fifth anniversary of the shuttle program's retirement. NASA is working with Boeing and SpaceX to resume astronaut launches from the Space Coast in commercial capsules by late 2017, and developing the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule for deep space exploration, starting with an unmanned test flight targeted for late 2018.
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.