At the Astrotech processing facility on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, workers guide NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, into position for mating with its Payload Attach Fitting.
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