Home126 individuals flew on Columbia, some of them multiple times.
Astronaut Rick Linnehan spent the most time flying on Columbia - all three flights in his career. He flew on STS-78, STS-90, and STS-109.
Astronauts Jim Halsell and Don Thomas flew together three times on Columbia. They flew on STS-65, STS-83, and STS-94.
Astronaut Tammy Jernigan also flew three flights on Columbia - STS-40, STS-52, and STS-80.
The average length of each of Columbia’s flights was 10.7 days. That ranged from as little as 2.3 days for the first two shuttle test flights (the record for the shortest shuttle flights to reach orbit) and as long as 17.6 days (the record for the longest shuttle mission).
Of course by definition Columbia set the record for the first shuttle launch and the first reflight of a space shuttle.
Amazingly Columbia set many extremes in the shuttle program. The lightest shuttle cargo was Columbia’s STS-1 with just 10,823 lbs. of instrumentation to monitor the maiden shuttle flight’s performance. The heaviest shuttle payload was Columbia’s STS-93 mission with the Chandra X-Ray observatory and its upper stage weighing in at 49,789 lbs.
The lightest shuttle landing was STS-1 at 195,472 lbs. and the heaviest was STS-83 at 213,060 lbs. - both on Columbia.
The first satellites deployed from the shuttle’s cargo bay were SBS-3 and Anik C3 on the STS-5 mission and the last major satellite deployed from a shuttle was the Chandra Advanced X-ray Facility on the STS-93 mission.
The first international passenger on the shuttle was West German Ulf Merbold, on the STS-9 mission.
Columbia had the highest percentage of daytime launches of any shuttle – 26 out of 28 flights. Only the STS-35 and STS-93 missions launched at night, coincidentally both astronomy missions.
Columbia is the only shuttle which has used every single upper stage used by the shuttle program, the commercial PAM-D and PAM-D2, the Hughes Leasat/SDS frisbee system, and the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).
And unfortunately Columbia also had the reputation of the shuttle which was the most difficult to get off the ground. Just three flights – STS 61-C, STS-35, and STS-73 - account for a whopping 16 launch delays, one fifth of the entire shuttle fleet.