Pegasus ICON Rollout to Hotpad, Mate to L-1011

Technicians secure Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket, containing NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), beneath the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft at the hot pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, on Oct. 14, 2018. The Stargazer will take off from the hot pad and travel to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Pegasus XL rocket will launch ICON from the Skid Strip at the Cape. ICON will study the frontier of space - the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. The explorer will help determine the physics of Earth's space environment and pave the way for mitigating its effects on our technology and communications systems.