Which two astronauts flew the first Space Shuttle flight?

On April 12, 1981, the inaugural launch of the Shuttle Columbia occurred at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew consisted of Robert Crippen and John Young. Crippen's career with NASA began in September of 1969. He was also involved in the Skylab program prior to piloting this historic first launch. John Young was the commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 and was the ninth person to walk on the moon. On this first shuttle flight, John Young was the mission commander.

Space shuttle missions had a designation of STS, with a corresponding flight number appended after this code. STS stood for "Space Transportation System". The first mission was named STS-1 and lasted over 2 days and 6 hours. The flight's course went over 1,074,000 miles and the landing was at Edwards Air Force base in California on April 14, 1981. The launch date occurred 20 years to the day after the first manned space flight in 1961 by Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

Sadly, Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was the second tragedy involving a the space shuttle after Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986.