NASA’s four Magnetospheric Multiscale mission spacecraft were encapsulated Monday, Feb. 23 in the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket’s 45-foot-tall, 14-foot-diameter nose cone inside Building 9 at the commercial Astrotech processing campus in Titusville.
In preparation for being encapsulated, team members removed over 700 protective covers from the spacecraft over the previous four days, working from top to bottom to make sure nothing was missed.
Delivery of the payload to the Atlas 5 assembly building for mating occurred on Friday, Feb. 27.
Launch of MMS is scheduled for March 12.
Photo credit: NASA-KSC
