VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – An Orbital Sciences’ spacecraft technician monitors the Pegasus payload fairing as it is rotated from around NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, in Orbital’s hangar on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Access to the spacecraft is needed for compatibility testing to verify communication with a tracking station in Hawaii. With the change in the launch timeframe to June, this station will be needed to support launch. After processing of Orbital’s Pegasus XL rocket and the spacecraft are complete, they will be flown on Orbital's L-10
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – An Orbital Sciences’ spacecraft technician monitors the Pegasus payload fairing as it is rotated from around NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, in Orbital’s hangar on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Access to the spacecraft is needed for compatibility testing to verify communication with a tracking station in Hawaii. With the change in the launch timeframe to June, this station will be needed to support launch. After processing of Orbital’s Pegasus XL rocket and the spacecraft are complete, they will be flown on Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft from Vandenberg to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on the Pacific Ocean’s Kwajalein Atoll for launch. The high-energy X-ray telescope will conduct a census of black holes, map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants, and study the origins of cosmic rays and the extreme physics around collapsed stars.
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Photo credit: © NASA/piemags / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: elv, missions, unmanned
