Col. C. Gordon Fullerton, an astronaut who performed the first flight test of a space shuttle in 1977, then piloted two shuttle missions — including one in which an engine failed shortly after takeoff — died on Wednesday in Lancaster, Calif. He was 76.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement announcing the death that Colonel Fullerton had a severe stroke in 2009, after which he had lived in a nursing home in Lancaster.

As a test pilot for both the Air Force and NASA, Colonel Fullerton logged about 15,000 hours flying more than 130 different types of aircraft. In his two shuttle missions, he was the commander on board the Challenger and one of two pilots on the Columbia.

Both spacecraft failed in later flights with disastrous results, the Challenger breaking apart on its ascent over Florida in 1986 and the Columbia disintegrating in 2003 as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over Louisiana and Texas, both crews perishing.