At the Astrotech processing facility on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a crane is moved into position to lift NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, from its test stand to determine its exact weight.
The satellite will survey the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating a cosmic clearinghouse of hundreds of millions of objects which will be catalogued and provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the universe. Launch is scheduled for Dec. 7. Photo credit: NASA/Doug Kolkow