The Spartan 201 mission was a scientific research effort aimed at the investigation of the interaction between the Sun and its outflowing wind of charged particles.

Other payloads aboard were the National Institutes of Health- Cells-4 (NIH-C4) experiment that investigates bone loss during space flight; the Biological Research in Canister-6 (BRIC-6) that studies the gravity-sensing mechanism within mammalian cells.

CGBA was a secondary payload that served as an incubator and data collection point for experiments in pharmaceuticals testing and biomedicine, bioprocessing and biotechnology, agriculture and the environment.

The TES-2 payload was designed to provide data for understanding the long-duration behavior of thermal energy storage fluoride salts that undergo repeated melting and freezing in microgravity.

Data from this experiment would validate a computer code called TESSIM,[10] useful for the analysis of heat receivers in advanced solar dynamic power system designs.