A Guide to Search Results for "Space Shuttle Columbia"
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Searches for "Space Shuttle Columbia" increased dramatically on Saturday February 1, 2003 as word spread that the shuttle had been destroyed during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and that all seven crew members had perished. All in all, the Columbia completed 27 successful missions prior to its destruction at the conclusion of its final mission. An investigation into the cause of the disaster is ongoing as NASA continues to mourn the loss of seven of its best and brightest.

The Columbia was named after the Boston, Massachusetts based sloop captained by American Robert Gray. The first U.S. Navy ship to circle the globe was also called the Columbia, as was the command module for Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission. According to naval tradition, ships take on a feminine personification, and the name of the Columbia was derived from the name of Christopher Columbus, intending the former to be the feminine personification of the United States.

On May 11, 1792, Captain Gray and his crew maneuvered the Columbia past the dangerous sandbar at the mouth of a river extending more than 1,000 miles through what is today south-eastern British Columbia, Canada and the Washington-Oregon border. This river was later named after the Columbia. Gray also led the Columbia and its crew on the first American circumnavigation of the globe, carrying a cargo of otter skins to Canton, China, and then returning to Boston.

In the day-to-day world of shuttle operations, the Columbia was commonly refered to as OV-102, for "Orbiter Vehicle 102." As the first space shuttle to be launched into orbit on April 12, 1981, OV-102 proved the operational concept of a reusable spaceship. Among its many other achievements were the recovery of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) satellite from orbit in January 1990 and the Spacelab Life Sciences mission in June 1991. The latter was the first manned spacelab mission totally dedicated to human medical research.

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