Length: 15"

Construction began on Columbia in 1975 at Rockwell International's (formerly North American Aviation/North American Rockwell, now Boeing North America) principal assembly facility in Palmdale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Columbia was named after the Boston-based sloop Columbia captained by Robert Gray, who in the 1790s explored the Pacific Northwest (including going upstream on its namesake river between Washington and Oregon) and which became the first American vessel to circumnavigate the globe. It is also named after the Command Module of Apollo 11, the first manned landing on another celestial body.^[2] After construction, the orbiter arrived at Kennedy Space Center on March 25, 1979, to prepare for its first launch. On March 19, 1981, during preparations for a ground test, two workers were asphyxiated while working in Columbia's nitrogen-purged aft engine compartment, resulting in their deaths