At the Astrotech processing facility on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, workers secure NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, to the crane that will lift it 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