STS-65

STS-65

Spacelab in Columbia's payload bay
Mission type	Microgravity research
Operator	NASA
COSPAR ID	1994-039A
SATCAT №	23173
Mission duration	14 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes
Distance travelled	9,886,200 kilometers (6,143,000 mi)
Orbits completed	235
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft	Space Shuttle Columbia
Payload mass	10,811 kilograms (23,834 lb)
Crew
Crew size	7
Members	Robert D. Cabana James D. Halsell Richard J. Hieb Carl E. Walz Leroy Chiao Donald A. Thomas Chiaki Naito-Mukai
Start of mission
Launch date	8 July 1994, 16:43:01 (1994-07-08UTC16:43:01Z) UTC
Launch site	Kennedy LC-39A
End of mission
Landing date	23 July 1994, 10:38:01 (1994-07-23UTC10:38:02Z) UTC
Landing site	Kennedy SLF Runway 33
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Low Earth
Perigee	300 kilometres (190 mi)
Apogee	304 kilometres (189 mi)
Inclination	28.45 degrees
Period	90.5 minutes
Left to right - Seated: Hieb, Cabana, Thomas; Standing: Chiao, Halsell, Naito-Mukai, Walz Space Shuttle program ← STS-59 STS-64 →

Left to right - Seated: Hieb, Cabana, Thomas; Standing: Chiao, Halsell, Naito-Mukai, Walz

STS-65 was a Space Shuttle program mission of Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, 8 July 1994. The flight was commanded by Robert D. Cabana who would go on later to lead the Kennedy Space Center.

The International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2) was the second in a series of Spacelab (SL) flights designed to conduct research in a microgravity environment. The IML concept enabled a scientist to apply results from one mission to the next and to broaden the scope and variety of investigations between missions. Data from the IML missions contributed to the research base for the space station.

As the name implies, IML-2 was an international mission. Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA), Canada, France, Germany and Japan collaborated with NASA on the IML-2 mission to provide the worldwide science community with a variety of complementary facilities and experiments. These facilities and experiments were mounted in twenty 19" racks in the IML 2 Module.

Research on IML-2 was dedicated to microgravity and life sciences. Microgravity science covers a broad range of activities from understanding the fundamental physics involved in material behavior to using those effects to generate materials that cannot otherwise be made in the gravitational environment of the Earth. In life sciences research, a reduction of gravitation's effect allows certain characteristics of cells and organisms to be studied in isolation. These reduced gravitational effects also pose poorly understood occupational health problems for space crews ranging from space adaptation syndrome to long-term hormonal changes. On IML-2, the microgravity science and life sciences experiments were complementary in their use of SL resources. Microgravity science tends to draw heavily on spacecraft power while life sciences places the greatest demand on crew time.