A crane lifts the cargo container housing one half of the fairing onto a trailer for transport to the Astrotech Payload Processing Facility.

At the Orbital Sciences Corp. Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a crane lifts the cargo container housing one half of the fairing onto a trailer for transport to the Astrotech Payload Processing Facility.
Once both halves of the fairing are delivered to Astrotech they will be installed around NASA's Glory satellite to protect it from the weather at the launch pad as well as from the atmosphere during flight. A four-stage Taurus XL rocket will carry Glory into low Earth orbit. Once Glory reaches orbit, it will collect data on the properties of aerosols and black carbon. It also will help scientists understand how the sun's irradiance affects Earth's climate. Launch is scheduled for 2:09 a.m. PST Feb. 23 from Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 576-E. For information, visit www.nasa.gov/glory. Photo credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB