Pegasus ICON Fin Arrival and Installation

Inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, technicians prepare the fins for installation on Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket on July 30, 2018. The Pegasus XL rocket, attached beneath the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, will launch NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch is scheduled for Oct. 26. ICON will study the frontier of space - the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. The explorer will help determine the physics of Earth's space environment and pave the way for mitigating its effects on our technology, communications systems and society.