During its 22 years of operation, 'Columbia' was flown on 28 missions in the Space Shuttle program, spending over 300 days in space and completing over 4,808 orbits around Earth. This equates to 125,204,911 miles (201,497,772 kilometres) around Earth.
Space Shuttle 'Columbia' (OV-102) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the first American ship to circumnavigate the upper North American Pacific coast and the female personification of the United States, 'Columbia' was the first of five Space Shuttle orbiters to fly in space, debuting the Space Shuttle launch vehicle on its maiden flight on April 12, 1981.
The first flight of 'Columbia' (STS-1) 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 (MOL) spacecraft, but transferred to NASA after its cancellation, and served as a support crew member for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions.