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On this day in space! April 14, 1981: 1st space shuttle mission lands

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On April 14, 1981, the first space shuttle mission returned to Earth after a two-day flight in space.

On April 14, 1981, the first space shuttle mission returned to Earth after a two-day flight in space. The space shuttle Columbia safely touched down on Rogers dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where hundreds of thousands of people showed up to watch. Only two astronauts were on the shuttle: the pilot, Bob Crippen, and the commander, John Young.

Since this was the maiden voyage of the space shuttle, the only objective for this mission was to see if the shuttle could safely carry the crew to orbit and bring them back down to Earth.

NASA's space shuttle Columbia touches down on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, bringing to an end the STS-1 mission on April 14, 1981. (Image credit: NASA)
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Some anomalies were reported, but Columbia and its crew came home safely.

This was the first time NASA landed a spacecraft on wheels, and the success of that landing made the space shuttle Columbia the world's first reusable space vehicle.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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