Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s. The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot. The insulting phrase for ...

Space history curator Michael Neufeld explores the history of Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39, which has seen launches of the Apollo program and Space Shuttle, and will see the return ...

It was the second, the Columbia, that had the honor of being the first space shuttle to launch into orbit. It blasted off on April 12, 1981, exactly two decades after Yuri Gagarin became the first ...