The mission also flew the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3) designed to investigate materials science and condensed matter physics.

The culprit turned out to be the innermost core, made of a porous material which, during its manufacture, trapped many bubbles of air, at atmospheric pressure.

[3] TSS-1R Science Investigations included: TSS Deployer Core Equipment and Satellite Core Equipment (DCORE/SCORE), Research on Orbital Plasma Electrodynamics (ROPE), Research on Electrodynamic Tether Effects (RETE), Magnetic Field Experiment for TSS Missions (TEMAG), Shuttle Electrodynamic Tether System (SETS), Shuttle Potential and Return Electron Experiment (SPREE), Tether Optical Phenomena Experiment (TOP), Investigation of Electromagnetic Emissions by the Electrodynamic Tether (EMET), Observations at the Earth's Surface of Electromagnetic Emissions by TSS (OESSE), Investigation and Measurement of Dynamic Noise in the TSS (IMDN), Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of TSS Dynamics (TEID) and the Theory and Modeling in Support of Tethered Satellite Applications (TMST).

An older Digital Unix program, originally on a DEC AlphaServer, was ported to run Linux on a laptop.

Astronomer and scientific writer Pierre Kohler mistook this document for fact and is responsible for a major increase in its redistribution in the early 21st century.

[7] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.