— When thousands of Star Trek fans were successful in their write-in campaign to name NASA's first space shuttle after their favorite starship, the effort not only became space history, but added to the timeline of the fictional universe they set out to honor.

"Star Trek" had been off the air for seven years when Orbiter Vehicle (OV)-101 rolled out of a southern California manufacturing plant with "Enterprise" printed on its side. Among the guests invited to see the rollout were the "crew" of the fictional starship USS Enterprise, together with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

The reveal that day — 50 years ago Thursday (Sept. 17) — was accompanied by an appropriate musical score.

"What a great day that was in 1976," said Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek's Spock, recalling in 2012 the debut of the space shuttle Enterprise at the orbiter's arrival in New York to go on display at the Intrepid Museum. "The hangar doors opened, this wonderful ship came rolling out and the Air Force band played the theme from 'Star Trek.'"

"It was a great day for America and a great day for us being connected to that history," Nimoy said. "We were very grateful."

To show that gratitude (again at the original suggestion of some of the show's fans), when the USS Enterprise was next seen in the 1979 feature film "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," the space shuttle was acknowledged among "all these ships ... named Enterprise." OV-101 is depicted among a gallery of backlit illustrations inside the recreation deck of the refit starship.

A similar nod to the prototype winged spacecraft appears even earlier in the Star Trek timeline, although in real life it premiered with the first episode of the series "Enterprise" in 2001. Aboard the NX-01 Enterprise, hanging in Captain Jonathan Archer's ready room, is a black-and-white drawing of the shuttle.

OV-101 is shown in flight, though without its tail cone that was used to improve aerodynamics when carried atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Other drawings on Archer's wall include a sailing ship and an aircraft carrier.

Breaking the fourth wall for a moment, the opening credits of "Enterprise" also show the orbiter in what is supposed to be a clip from archival footage. The scene uses a NASA clip of a different orbiter that was digitally altered to display the name "Enterprise."

Later in the series' run, a NASA orbiter is seen in physical form.

"We had a model of the shuttle in some appearances of Admiral Forrest's office in the fourth season of 'Enterprise,'" technical consultant Michael Okuda told collectSPACE. "The model was a 1/144 Revell model that came out of a launch tower kit. I never built the kit, but used parts from it for several props."

A model of OV-101 also appeared in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," though its appearance introduces an alternate history for the Star Trek in-universe space shuttle Enterprise as compared to the one in reality. NASA twice considered retrofitting the real OV-101 to fly into space, but it was only ever used for ground and atmospheric tests.

In the sixth season episode "Inquisition" — which first aired in 1998, but by Star Trek's timeline was set in 2374 — a desktop display in Benjamin Sisko's office depicts Enterprise docked to the International Space Station.

In real life, the ISS began assembly eight months after this episode premiered. According to "The Star Trek Encyclopedia" (by Okuda and his wife Denise), the model was a gift to the show's production staff by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, Gene's widow and multiple-part guest star throughout the franchise, and was altered for its on-screen appearance to be Enterprise.

A space shuttle Enterprise model can also be seen in the 2013 feature film "Star Trek Into Darkness," the 12th movie in the franchise and second as part of a reboot directed by J.J. Abrams. The orbiter is among a collection of 14 replicas of historic spacecraft displayed in Admiral Alexander Marcus' office at Starfleet.

Outside of the Star Trek universe, an art print released in 1976 commemorated the new connection between the burgeoning franchise and U.S. space program. The piece shows the newly-named winged orbiter (with its air data probe still attached) and the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701, from "The Original Series").

A quote attributed to Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins completes the piece: "To go places and do things that have never been done before...".