STS-5
"Columbia" landed on Runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base on 16 November 1982, at 6:33 am PST, having traveled 2 million miles in 81 orbits during a mission that lasted 5 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes and 26 seconds. "Columbia" was returned to KSC on 22 November 1982. STS-5 was the first shuttle flight in which the crew did not wear pressure suits for the launch, reentry, and landing portions of the flight, similar to the Soviet Voskhod and Soyuz missions prior to the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission in 1971.
The shuttle was formally declared "operational" after STS-4. However, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), in its report on the loss with all crew aboard of "Columbia" during STS-107 in 2003, asserted that the orbiter should never have been considered operational and that, while not intrinsically unsafe, it was in fact an experimental vehicle. The CAIB's rationale was that civilian and military aircraft that are considered operational must have been tested and proven over thousands of safe flights in their final operational configurations, whereas the shuttle had conducted under 200 flights, with continuous modification. NASA operated the Space Shuttle as an experimental vehicle for the remainder of the program.
Shipwrecks of the inland Columbia River
"J.N. Teal" burned at Portland on October 22, 1907. "Helen Hale" burned in 1913 somewhere on the Upper Reach. "Idaho", which had sunk "Boneta" in 1905, herself burned at Blackrock Bay in Lake Coeur d'Alene in 1915. Other boats destroyed by fire were "R.C. Young", at Dove's Landing July 22, 1892 and "Regulator", burned on ways at St. Johns, January 24, 1906. Fire was so common a cause of destruction that in some cases little information is available as to the cause, date, or place, such as "Messenger" in 1879, "Mascot" in 1911, and "Saint Paul", burned somewhere on the Columbia in 1915. Not every fire which destroyed a steamboat was ignited on the boat itself. Thus "James Clinton" was destroyed at Oregon City on April 23, 1861, after being ignited by sparks from burning buildings across the river.