On April 12, 1981, Columbia took off for the first space mission of a Space Shuttle. Columbia was the second Space Shuttle built after the prototype Enterprise, which however never flew. Because of some of its design features Columbia was never used for missions that included docking at the space station Mir or the International Space Station, unlike the other Space Shuttles.

In the morning of April 12, 1961 the Vostok 1 took off, went into orbit and after travelling around the world Yuri Gagarin began re-entry procedures. The service module had to come off but some of the cables kept it attached to the rest of the ship for a bit longer than expected before breaking. During the landing Gagarin ejected and opened his parachute while the Vostok service module landed with its own parachute.