It comes after 12

The STS-13 crew, redesignated STS-41-C, created this patch that highlights superstitions and triskaidekaphobia.

The STS-13 crew, redesignated STS-41-C, created this patch that highlights superstitions and triskaidekaphobia.

Credit:

collectSPACE.com

Prior to Crew-13, NASA managers leaned into the superstition and devised a less intuitive but more data-driven designation that went into effect after the ninth space shuttle mission. Hence, what would have been STS-13 became STS-41-C, where the 4 was the fiscal year (1984), the 1 was the launch site (Kennedy Space Center in Florida), and C was the order of launch (C was the third planned flight of the year).

“I mentioned it was 41-C that originally was STS-13, and my friend Jim Beggs, who was the administrator of NASA, had triskaidekaphobia, and he said, ‘There’s not going to be [another] Apollo 13 or a Shuttle 13, so come up with a new numbering system.’ So we did come up with this complex system for numbering the shuttles during that…