On 11 May 1792, Gray and his crew maneuvered their Columbia past a dangerous sandbar at the mouth of a mighty river now known as the Columbia. That ship also took Gray and his crew on the first American circumnavigation of the globe.

Columbia, the first shuttle, was soon joined by three sister ships: Challenger (in 1982); Discovery (1983), and Atlantis (1985). Endeavor came later, in 1991, after the Challenger had exploded.

When Columbia first launched on 12 April 1981, she had only two crew members - John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen. Their mission was to determine whether the shuttle could safely liftoff, travel in space and return to earth.

During the orbiter’s departure from Cape Canaveral, NASA’s cameras took pictures. Later, the shuttle team could study close-up views of Columbia’s external tank and the joints of her two solid rocket boosters. At the time, of course, no one knew that a significant design flaw in those joints would cause the Challenger disaster less than five years later.

As she reached the stage where her solid rocket boosters would separate from the orbiter, Columbia continued on her launch path. Mission STS-1 was safely underway and the boosters were successfully recovered after they fell into the sea.

Just before her first landing, Columbia was accompanied by chase planes. Safely touching down, she awaited transport back to the Kennedy Space Center atop a NASA Boeing 747 equipped for that purpose.

It had been a triumphal flight, and Columbia would fly the next four shuttle missions. But something had happened to Columbia’s heat tiles during launch. Sixteen tiles were lost and 148 others were damaged when an overpressure wave occurred as the solid rocket booster ignited.