KSC-2012-1244

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- In a clean room at Vandenberg Air Force Base's processing facility in California, a technician conducts a solar array illumination test on NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft. A Pegasus XL rocket is set to launch NuSTAR into space. Once the rocket and spacecraft are processed at Vandenberg, they will be flown on the Orbital Sciences’ L-1011 carrier aircraft to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at the Pacific Ocean’s Kwajalein Atoll for launch. The high-energy x-ray telescope will conduct a census for black holes, map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants, and study the origins of cosmic rays and the extreme physics around collapsed stars. For more information, visit science.nasa.gov/missions/nustar/. Photo credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB