CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Workers prepare to lift a nose cone to top out one of a pair of replica space shuttle solid rocket boosters at the entry of the space shuttle Atlantis attraction under construction at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Workers will use cranes to place the nose cones atop each of the model boosters. The building at right houses the actual shuttle Atlantis. Photo credit: NASA_Dmitri Gerondidakis 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