NASA Releases Video to Mark 40th Anniversary of Space Shuttle Program

NASA on Monday released a new video to commemorate the first flight of the Space Shuttle mission 40 years ago. This debut flight opened up opportunities for subsequent missions that sparked a frantic interest in space exploration that continues up to this day.

The first NASA shuttle mission, STS-1, which was aboard the orbiter Columbia, was launched at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981. Before that historic flight, the program had to face and overcome several timelines, budgetary, and design difficulties. Yet, as the NASA video showed, people were in sheer delight as they witnessed the lift-off.

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Video archives show the Space Shuttle crew in their launch to space. The flight went off smoothly, despite losing just a few lost heat shield tiles on its way to space. The crew would return after the two-day test flight on April 14.

First Space Shuttle Launch 40 Years Ago

STS-1 was the first space launch in the US since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Americans were elated to witness astronauts leaving Kennedy Space Center again the same way that the SpaceX Crew Dragon accomplished in 2020, the first launch of a space crew in nine years. The last launch of the Shuttle was in 2011.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Space Shuttle Discovery returning to Cape Canaveral, Florida on March 9, 2011, after its final mission from the International Space Station.

The Space Shuttle program was distinctive, as it allowed astronauts to return to Earth on a runway, the NASA video emphasizes, unlike any other previous space programs. The Space Shuttle proved too costly to bring people to space as earlier hoped, but its accomplishments were outstanding, such as launching the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and assisting in the construction of the International Space Station.

The video shows snippets of the diverse team of astronauts the shuttle took to orbit. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and later revealed as the first LGBTQ+ astronaut after her death was shown briefly in the video.

Space Shuttle's 40^th Anniversary Cultural Milestones

Other cultural milestones of the shuttle included the first African American Guion Bluford, the first Asian American Ellison Onizuka, the first Space Shuttle commander Eileen Collins, and several international astronauts, which led to agreements between governments that made up the core of the International Space Station program. Actually, the Space Shuttle did not dock at the ISS in its maiden voyages. They did so at the Soviet space station Mir during the shuttle-Mir program in the 1990s.

The video also emphasized the shuttle's 30 years of missions and continuing to serve its mandate of taking humans to space.

The video, however, did not mention the two fatal accidents that marred the program. This includes the Challenger in 1986 that killed Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, who was the first teacher in space, Commander Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik, and Gregory Jarvis, and the Columbia disaster in 2003 that claimed the lives of Commander William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Roman.

These incidents led to the suspensions of the program during those years as NASA acted on the spacecraft's flaws. The shuttle program went on despite the disasters and assisted in completing the first phase of the ISS construction.

10 Years since Space Shuttle's Retirement

This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Space Shuttle's retirement, with the last Space Shuttle flight STS-135, landing back on July 21, 2011, is also shown in the video.

The Space Shuttle's legacy remains massive ten years after with the still operational Hubble, thanks to the maintenance work of repair astronaut crews. A few weeks ago, Lego unveiled versions of the iconic Discovery orbiter and the Hubble Space Telescope.