Space Shuttle program: STS-60 is launched, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development, as a proposed nuclear shuttle in the plan was cancelled in 1972. It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips.

STS-60 was the first mission of the U.S./Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, and the 18th flight of Discovery, in which Sergei K. Krikalev became the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used NASA Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on February 3, 1994, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission carried the Wake Shield Facility experiment and a SPACEHAB module, developed by SPACEHAB Inc., into orbit, and carried out a live bi-directional audio and downlink link-up with the cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir.

Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev is a Russian mechanical engineer and former cosmonaut. He is a veteran of six spaceflights, including two long-duration missions to Mir, two short-duration missions aboard NASA's Space Shuttle, and two long-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

February 3 is the 34th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 331 days remain until the end of the year.