KSC-2012-1530

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – Inside an environmental enclosure at Vandenberg Air Force Base's processing facility in California, technicians remove a section of the C-plate from the interface of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, spacecraft and its Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket. The C-plate protected the spacecraft during mating operations. The uniting of the spacecraft with the rocket is a major milestone in prelaunch preparations. After processing of the rocket and spacecraft are complete, they will be flown on Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft from Vandenberg to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on the Pacific Ocean’s Kwajalein Atoll for launch. The high-energy x-ray telescope will conduct a census of 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 http://www.nasa.gov/nustar. Photo credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB