A mission to develop new techniques to study Earth's atmosphere from space was launched aboard Discovery at 6:23 p.m. on September 9, 1994. The Lidar in Space Technology (LITE) payload was tested from the shuttle and the Spartan 201 solar studies satellite was deployed and retrieved. Dick Richards led the crew with pilot Blaine Hammond and mission specialists Jerry Linenger, Susan Helms, Carl Meade and Mark Lee.