Space Shuttle Columbia at Space.com

As the first shuttle to enter the NASA fleet, the Columbia space shuttle carried out a total of 28 separate missions, flew 125,204,911 miles and spent more than 300 hours in outer space during its nearly 22 year career. Columbia’s remarkable tenure includes a number of notable firsts, including transporting the first non-American astronaut into space in 1983. On March 5, 1998, Columbia astronaut Eileen Collins became the first female to be named commander of a NASA space shuttle mission.

Space shuttle Columbia’s most recent scientific mission was tragically cut short on February 1, 2003, when the shuttle disintegrated during routine re-entry about 39 miles above the earth at a speed of approximately 12,500 miles per hour. All seven crew members aboard the shuttle were killed.

It was later determined by NASA that a hole in one of Columbia’s wings, punctured during the shuttle’s launch and undetected by the crew throughout the entire 16-day mission, was the cause of the deadly accident when plasma was allowed to penetrate the interior of the damaged wing, devastating Columbia’s support structure and causing the rest of the shuttle to break apart.

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