Columbia (OV1O2)

COLUMBIA BLASTING OFF

Columbia the oldest bird in the fleet, and was named after the Boston, Massachusetts based sloop captained by American Robert Gray in May 11, 1792. Gray and his crew maneuvered their ship Columbia past a dangerous sand bar at the mouth of a river reaching more than 1,000 miles through present day South-Eastern British Columbian, Canada, and the Washington-Oregon border. This river was later named after the ship. Gray also led Columbia and it's crew on the first American voyage of the globe, carrying a cargo of otter skins to Canto, China, and then back to Boston.

Over the years other ships would bare the title of Columbia. In fact the first U.S. Navy ship to circle the world bore this name, as well as the command module used on the first lunar landing (Apollo XI).
Columbia would preserve the legacy of being first by becoming the first Shuttle to orbit the Earth in 1981. Over the next few years four sister ships would join the fleet of shuttle orbiters. Challenger, arriving in 1984 and destroyed four years in an accident; Discovery in 1983; Atlantis in 1985; and Endeavour, built as a replacement for Challenger in 1991.
To continue the legacy of being first, Columbia was the first Shuttle orbiter scheduled for inspection and retrofit. It was transported August 10, 1991, after the completion of mission STS-40, to the prime shuttle contractor Rockwell International in Palmdale, California. The retrofit included the addition of carbon brakes, drag chute, improved nose wheel steering, removal of development flight instrumentation, and enhanced thermal protection.

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Going down
Columbia STS-2 being lowered onto main tank and SRB's


The Shuttle orbiter Columbia is still in use to date. As a matter a fact Columbia has just finished a mission that started at 8:30am, 7/20/96 at KSC. Columbia was given the okay to go for the record of time duration in an U.S. orbiter in space. The new record they set was a 17 day duration orbiting Earth in a spacecraft.

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Last Updated by TeamQuest '96 c/o hotshots@ix.netcom.com on August 15th 1996 at 20:59:59 PDT