Operations are underway to remove two of the the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft at the Astrotech payload processing facility near Kennedy Space Center.

Operations are underway to remove two of the the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft from their protective shipping container in the airlock of Building 2 at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, near Kennedy Space Center.

The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, is a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes: magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration and turbulence. These two spacecraft comprise the mission's upper stack. The two MMS spacecraft comprising the lower stack arrived at Astrotech on Oct. 29. Launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is targeted for March 12, 2015. To learn more about MMS, visit http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett