The STS-85 flight crew members pose with their T-38 jet trainer aircraft at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) after their arrival from NASA’s Johnson Space Center to begin final preparations for the STS-85 mission. They are (from left): Mission Specialist Stephen K. Robinson; Payload Commander N. Jan Davis; Pilot Kent V. Rominger; Payload Specialist Bjarni V. Tryggvason; Commander Curtis L. Brown, Jr.; and Mission Specialist Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. The primary payload aboard the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery for the 11-day space flight is the Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-2 (CRISTA-SPAS-2). Other STS-85 payloads include the Manipulator Flight Demonstration (MFD), and Technology Applications and Science-1 (TAS-1) and International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker-2 (IEH-2) experiments KSC-97PC1159

The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.