Looking back 40 years at first space shuttle mission, STS-1 On April 12, 1981, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen blasted off on the maiden voyage of the space shuttle program inside the orbiter Columbia. It was the first of 135 shuttle launches. The program would see 133 successful missions with two ending in disaster. Space Shuttle Challenger was lost 90 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, and Columbia would be lost after breaking up upon reentry over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003. The shuttle program followed Project Apollo, which sent six successful missions to the moon, along with one mission in 1975 known as the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Here’s a look at some of the things you might not know about the first shuttle flight.