Space Shuttle Challenger the first night launch and night landing of a Space Shuttle. "Challenger" was also the first space shuttle to be destroyed in an accident during a mission. The collected debris of the vessel is currently buried in decommissioned missile silos at Launch Complex 31, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A section of the fuselage recovered from Space Shuttle "Challenger" can also be found at the "Forever Remembered" memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. From time to time, further pieces of debris from the orbiter wash up on the Florida coast. When this happens, they are collected
Space Shuttle program from the back of a specially modified Boeing 747, only for initial atmospheric landing tests (ALT). "Enterprise"'s first test flight was on February 18, 1977, only five years after the Shuttle program was formally initiated; leading to the launch of the first space-worthy shuttle "Columbia" on April 12, 1981 on STS-1. The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by "Atlantis", in July 2011, retiring the final Shuttle in the fleet. The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011. Before the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, NASA began early studies of space shuttle designs.