Engineers as NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia encapsule NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft into the fairing of the Minotaur V launch vehicle nose-cone.
Engineers as NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia encapsule NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft into the fairing of the Minotaur V launch vehicle nose-cone. LADEE is the first spacecraft designed, developed, built, integrated and tested at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The probe will launch on a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket, an excess ballistic missile converted into a space launch vehicle and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
Image credit: NASA Wallops / Terry Zaperach