The mission was cut short due to a problem with Fuel Cell #2 and it landed on April 8, after 3 days 23 hours.

MSL was a collection of microgravity experiments housed inside a European Spacelab Long Module (LM).

Additional technology experiments were to be performed in the Middeck Glovebox (MGBX) developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and the High-Packed Digital Television (HI-PAC DTV) system was used to provide multi-channel real-time analog science video.

Prior to launch, and continuing through the early part of the mission, flight controllers on the ground were monitoring an anomaly within the electrical power generating Fuel Cell #2 (of three), making it appear that oxygen and hydrogen might be starting to uncontrollably mix, which could lead to detonation (a similar scenario that caused the explosion on Apollo 13).

Instead, they called for an unprecedented reflight of the same mission, once the normal processing could be completed (refill the propellant tanks and other consumables like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and water, change out the main engines, etc.).

The same crew flew the reflight, which was designated STS-94 (the next available unused shuttle mission number at the time), three months later, in July 1997.

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