30 years of NASA shuttle flights: April 12, 2011

William Atkins
Tuesday, 12 April 2011 07:09

Science - Space

On April 12, 1981, the first U.S. space shuttle mission (STS-1) launched from the Kennedy Space Center. On April 12, 2011, NASA will celebrate 30 years of space shuttle flights.

In addition to the 30th-year anniversary of the space transportation system (STS) program, commonly called the space shuttle program, the world will also be celebrating on this day the 50th-year anniversary of the first manned flight into space.

That April 12, 1961 flight was a Soviet spaceflight with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin onboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

For more information on this historic flight, please read the 4/11/2011 Fox News article '6 Surprising Facts About Yuri Gagarin's First Spaceflight' and the 4/10/2011 iTWire article 'Problems revealed 50 years after Yuri Gagarin's space flight.'

At the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, NASA administrator Charles Bolden will participate in a ceremony to celebrate the anniversary of the first space shuttle launch: that of STS-1 and the space shuttle Columbia with commander John W. Young and pilot Robert Crippen onboard.

The entire event will be shown on the television on the NASA Television channel and on the internet on NASA TV.

The ceremony will be held outside the hanger for the space shuttle Atlantis, which is being readied for its STS-135 flight into space - the last space shuttle flight in the program.

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