Launch from Cape Canaveral (
KSC);
landing on Cape Canaveral (
KSC).
Deploying of communications-satellite
TDRS-G with the two-stage Inertial Upper Stage (IUS)
solid rocket. The
TDRS system is a space-based network that provides
communications, tracking, telemetry, data acquisition and command services
essential to the Space Shuttle and other low-Earth orbital spacecraft such as
the Hubble Space Telescope (
HST), the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (
GRO), the
Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (
UARS), Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), Extreme
Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), TOPEX-Poseidon, Landsat and many more.
Secondary objectives of the mission were to fulfill the requirements of
the Physiological and Anatomical Rodent Experiment / National Institutes of
Health-Rodents (PARE/NIH-R); Bioreactor Demonstration System (BDS), Commercial
Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG); Space Tissue Loss/National Institutes of
Health-Cells (STL/NIH-C); Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC); Shuttle
Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II), Visual Function Tester-4 (VFT-4);
Hand-Held, Earth Oriented, Real-Time, Cooperative, User-Friendly,
Location-Targeting and Environmental System (HERCULES); Microcapsules in
Space-B (MIS-B); Windows Experiment (WINDEX); Radiation Monitoring
Equipment-III (RME-III); and the Military Applications of Ship Tracks
(MAST).
The Bioreactor Demonstration System was designed to use
ground-based and space-bioreactor systems to grow individual cells into
organized tissue that is morphologically and functionally similar to the
original tissue or organ. The BDS was composed of a device developed at the
Johnson Space Center that used a rotating cylinder to suspend cells and tissues
in a growth medium, simulating some aspects of microgravity. The system, which
was already used extensively in ground-based research, also provided for gas
and nutrient exchange. The purpose of the flight experiment was to demonstrate
the performance of the bioreactor in actual mircrogravity. As such, the primary
goal was to assess the fluid dynamic characteristics of the bioreactor in
microgravity.
A Shuttle window was damaged by a micrometeorite. The
mission was extended one day, because of bad weather on the landing
site.
