The first American to orbit the Earth -- John Glenn -- made his triumphant return to space aboard Discovery. Launch of occurred on October 29, 1998 at 2:20 p.m. The Spacehab module was flown with experiments and the Spartan 201 solar science satellite made a reflight after problems of STS-87. The crew was led by commander Curt Brown, with pilot Steve Lindsey, mission specialists Scott Parazynski, Stephen Robinson and Pedro Duque and payload specialists Chiaki Mukai and Glenn.