On this day in 1995, STS-73 on the Space Shuttle Columbia returned to Earth after an extremely successful 15-day mission in orbit.
STS-73 carried the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) Spacelab mission. Experiments conducted in-flight included research into the role of gravity in combustion, fluid physics and the formation of semiconductor crystals.
With these experiments, STS-73 helped to lay the foundation for the scientific research later conducted on board the International Space Station. The flight also contributed to several terrestrial commercial successes, such as the development of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that have been built into billions of consumer devices all over the planet.
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