Space Shuttle

Searchlights turn Columbia into a sculpture on Pad 39A in this timed exposure from March 5, 1981, more than a month before STS-1, the first Space Shuttle mission. The service structures glow to the left, and the external tank is still painted white. Nothing else here looks like it: a winged orbiter strapped to a fuel tank and two solid boosters, built to fly people to orbit again and again. Between the first launch on April 12, 1981 and the final landing on July 21, 2011, the fleet flew 135 missions.