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.

Experiments in a military research program but also biological and several other secundary experiments were performed. A Shuttle window was damaged by a micrometeorite. The mission was extended one day, because of bad weather on the landing site.