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Beginning the Journey to the Launch Pad

Jan. 25, 2012
NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission is lowered into its shipping container at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. It is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 14, 2012.

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission is seen here being lowered into its shipping container at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft is headed to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California, where it will be mated to its rocket. It is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 14, 2012.

NuSTAR is a small-explorer mission managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech, JPL, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Danish Technical University in Denmark, the University of California, Berkeley, and ATK-Goleta. NuSTAR will be operated by U.C. Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

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