Launch from Cape Canaveral (KSC); landing on Cape Canaveral (KSC).

Mission ATLAS-2 in the "Mission to Planet Earth program". It was designed to collect data on the relationship between the sun's energy output and Earth's middle atmosphere and how these factors affect the ozone layer. It included six instruments mounted on a Spacelab pallet in the cargo bay, with the seventh mounted on the wall of the bay in two Get Away Special canisters. Atmospheric instruments included the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) experiment, the Millimeter Wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS), and the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet/A (SSBUV/A) spectrometer (on the cargo bay wall). Solar science instruments were the Solar Spectrum Measurement (SOLSPEC) instrument, the Solar Ultraviolet Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM), and the Active Cavity Radiometer (ACR) and Solar Constant (SOLCON) experiments.

The Shuttle Point Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy-201 (SPARTAN-201) platform was deployed on April 11, 1993 and retrieved after 2 days of free flight. It was a free flying science instrument platform designed to study velocity and acceleration of the solar wind and observe the sun's corona.

The crew also made numerous radio contacts to schools around the world using the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment II (SAREX II), including brief radio contact with the Russian MIR space station, the first such contact between Shuttle and MIR using amateur radio equipment.