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VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Technicians inside Building 1555 conduct inspection, cleaning and electrical testing on half of a payload fairing for the Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL rocket that will launch the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, spacecraft. The fairing will be fitted to the nose of the Pegasus to protect the spacecraft from atmospheric heating and stress during launch. 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: VAFB_Randy Beaudoin