42 years have passed since the first space shuttle landing

14 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

On April 14, 1981, the tail wheels of the space shuttle Columbia touched down in Rogers Dry Lake in the Edwards Base United States Air Force, Southern California.

It was completed like this, 42 years ago now, the first space mission of the ‘shuttle’ consisting of an orbital flight of more than 48 hours. The landing demonstrated the effectiveness of the new American manned space launch system, whose main virtue was precisely landing like an airplane and the possibility of being reused.

Astronauts John W. Young, commander of the STS-1 mission, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, were aboard the vehicle. The mission marked the first NASA flight to land on wheels and the beginning of a new era of space flights with the same ships.

An area of ​​the airbase was set aside for the public display of the landing, and more than 200,000 people gathered. Media from around the world covered the event.

According to NASA, James Young, Chief Historian at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, remembered the landing well. “You just had to be there to hear, even feel, the double wave of the sonic boom,” Young said. “It was a tremendous sense of excitement to see something never seen before, to witness a historic event.”