The Columbia Space Shuttle

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Space exploration has changed and developed since the first man was sent into space. Advanced rockets, new computer technology, and remote controlled robots are only a few of the things that made space travel possible. Even though this technology was efficient, it was not cheap. When a rocket was sent into space, only the capsule holding the astronauts returned to space. This expensive way of space travel was forever changed with the creation of the space shuttle. The Columbia space shuttle was important to space exploration because it used new technology that changed space travel, completed missions that other spacecraft could not, and brought new people into space.
NASA received a contract to build the shuttle on July 26, 1972 as a prototype named the Enterprise (Dunbar “Space Shuttle” 1). Construction began on March 25, 1975, in Rockwell International’s assembly plant in Palmdale, California, and was completed and ready for its first flight on April 12, 1981 (Dunbar “Space Shuttle” 1). The first reusable spacecraft was too heavy, weighing 178,000 pounds, and missing the necessary tools to assist with the construction of the International Space Station (Dunbar “Space Shuttle” 1). Columbia was still used to discover breakthroughs in science, though, and was renamed Columbia after the first American ship to travel around the earth and the Apollo eleven command module (Dunbar “Space Shuttle” 1). Columbia is also commonly referred to as OV-102, or Orbiter Vehicle-102 (Dunbar “Space Shuttle”, 1).
The first flight of the Columbia, also known as STS-1 (Space Transportation System One), was launched on April 12, 1981, as a test flight of the combined performance of the external tank, the shuttle itself, and the solid rocket boosters ...

... middle of paper ...

...vy Dive Team, the Texas Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency (Moffett 1). The area containing shuttle parts was about 240 miles long and ten miles wide, which stretched across east Texas and into west Louisiana (Moffett 1). About thirty-eight percent of the Columbia was found, along with the bodies of the crew (Dunbar “STS-107” 1).
Overall, the Columbia space shuttle contributed a great deal to space exploration, from its construction in 1981, to its destruction while reentering earth’s atmosphere in 2003. The Columbia brought a new era of space exploration, and during its twenty-nine missions had many firsts in space. The Columbia space shuttle was important to space exploration because it used new technology that changed space travel, completed missions that other spacecraft could not, and brought new people into space.

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