STS-41C (April 6 - 13, 1984) was the 11th flight of the Space Shuttle (the fifth for orbiter Challenger) and marked the first time a direct ascent trajectory was used to reach orbit. The mission had two primary objectives for its five person crew: deploy the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and to capture, repair and redeploy the malfunctioning Solar Maximum Mission satellite.

The attached 'Space Exposed Seed' packet contains tomato seeds from Canister 5 (layers C and D mixed), stowed aboard LDEF under a Teflon® thermal cover in the peripheral tray. Selected from among the 12.5 million seeds that remained in orbit for 5 years, they are the remainder from experiments run by students at Edison Middle School in West Orange, New Jersey.