Similar

STS097-703-001 - STS-097 - View of MS Tanner working on Unity during the third EVA of STS-97

Photographers in Action - GT-2. NASA public domain image colelction.

S125E009883 - STS-125 - STS-125 MS5 Feustel during EVA5

VANDENBERG AFB – Orbital Sciences engineers connect the payload fairing over NASA's IRIS spacecraft. The fairing connects to the nose of the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket that will lift the solar observatory into orbit in June. The work is taking place in a hangar at Vandenberg Air Force Base where IRIS, short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, is being prepared for launch on a Pegasus XL rocket. Scheduled for launch from Vandenberg June 26, IRIS will open a new window of discovery by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromospheres and transition region into the sun’s corona using spectrometry and imaging. IRIS fills a crucial gap in our ability to advance studies of the sun-to-Earth connection by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the foundation of the corona and the region around the sun known as the heliosphere. Photo credit: NASA/Tony Vauclin KSC-2013-2638

S89E5206 - STS-089 - MPNE - MS Anderson works with three middeck payloads

Pegasus XL CYGNSS Fairing Installation

description

Summary

In Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the payload fairing is being installed on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket. On board Pegasus are eight NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, or CYGNSS, spacecraft. When preparations are competed at Vandenberg, the L-1011/Pegasus XL combination will be flown to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On Dec. 12, 2016, the carrier aircraft is scheduled to take off from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket with the L-1011 flying off shore. CYGNSS satellites will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will help scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a crucial role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

label_outline

Tags