KSC-2013-2375

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – Kennedy Space Center Resident Office personnel representing the NASA Launch Services Program at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, display the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government plaque. NASA ranked No. 1 the “large” category, those which have more than 15,000 employees. From the left are Bob Rasmison, Randy Beaudoin, Kevin Monette, and Jeff Ehrsam. Rasmison and Ehrsam work together in integration and engineering as the spacecraft's liaison at the processing facility and pre-launch site locations. Beaudoin is an electrical engineer that follows manufacturing, assembly and integration of electrical systems and components to insure compliance with technical specifications and standards. Monette is the Safety and Mission Assurance representative providing independent assessment to help determine residual risk associated with launch vehicle flight readiness. They are standing next to the Orbital Sciences Corporation's Pegasus rocket which will launch the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph IRIS spacecraft. Scheduled for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base no earlier than June 26, 2013, 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. For more information, visit http:__iris.gsfc.nasa.gov Photo credit: NASA_Randy Beaudoin