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Columbia was named after the American sloop Columbia Rediviva which, from 1787 to 1793, under the command of Captain Robert Gray, explored the US Pacific Northwest and became the first American vessel to circumnavigate the globe. It is also named after the command module of Apollo 11, the first crewed landing on another celestial body. Columbia was also the female symbol of the United States. After construction, the orbiter arrived at Kennedy Space Center on March 25, 1979, to prepare for its first launch. Columbia was originally scheduled to lift off in late 1979, however the launch date was delayed by problems with both the RS-25 engine, as well as the thermal protection system. The first flight of Columbia was commanded by John Young, a veteran from the Gemini and Apollo programs who was the ninth person to walk on the Moon in 1972, and piloted by Robert Crippen, a rookie astronaut originally selected to fly on the military's Manned Orbital Laboratory spacecraft, but transferred to NASA after its cancellation, and served as a support crew member for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions. Columbia spent 610 days in the Orbiter Processing Facility, another 35 days in the Vehicle Assembly Building, and 105 days on Pad 39A before finally lifting off. It was successfully launched on April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of the first human spaceflight (Vostok 1), and returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting the Earth 36 times, landing on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It then undertook three further research missions to test its technical characteristics and performance. Its first operational mission, with a four-man crew, launched on November 11, 1982. At this point Columbia was joined by Challenger, which flew the next three shuttle missions, while Columbia underwent modifications for the first Spacelab mission. In 1983, Columbia, under the command of John Young on what was his sixth spaceflight, undertook its second operational mission, in which the Spacelab science laboratory and a six-person crew was carried, including the first non-American astronaut on a space shuttle, Ulf Merbold. After the flight, it spent 18 months at the Rockwell Palmdale facility beginning in January 1984, undergoing modifications that removed the Orbiter Flight Test hardware and updating it to similar specifications as those of its sister orbiters.

O Telescópio Espacial Hubble é um telescópio que foi levado para uma órbita baixa por um ônibus espacial em abril de 1990. Recebeu seu nome em honra ao astrônomo Edwin Hubble. Apesar de não ser o primeiro telescópio espacial, o Hubble é um dos maiores e mais versáteis, e é conhecido ao mesmo tempo como uma ferramenta fundamental de pesquisa e como uma espécie de relações públicas para a divulgação da astronomia. O Hubble foi construído pela NASA e é um dos grandes observatórios espaciais, juntamente com o Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, o Chandra X-ray Observatory e o Spitzer Space Telescope. O Hubble foi criado com um orçamento relativamente baixo de 2 bilhões de dólares e tem funcionado desde 1990, encantando cientistas e o público. Algumas de suas imagens, obtidas com o inovador Hubble Deep Field, tornaram-se famosas. A sonda Magellan, enviada ao planeta Vênus, foi a primeira das três sondas de espaço profundo a ser lançada no Space Shuttle e a primeira nave espacial a utilizar técnicas de aerofrenagem para reduzir a sua órbita. A Magellan criou o primeiro (e atualmente o melhor) mapeamento em alta resolução com radar da superfície do planeta, equiparando-se a outros mapeamentos planetários em fotografia convencional. Missões anteriores para Vênus tinham produzido imagens de baixa resolução, identificando somente formações de dimensões continentais.