KSC-2013-2460

VANDENBERG, AFB - Engineers and members of the IRIS-Pegasus launch team re-verify the spacecraft ahead of the next flight simulation for the mission. The work is taking place in a hangar at Vandenberg where NASA's IRIS spacecraft, short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, is being prepared for launch on a Pegasus XL rocket. 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. Photo credit: NASA_Randy Beaudoin