Spacecraft mate the flight conical adapter and soft ride to the test payload attach fitting clampband on the spacecraft test stand.

At Vandenberg Air Force Base's Astrotech processing facility in California, technicians working on NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spacecraft mate the flight conical adapter and soft ride to the test payload attach fitting clampband on the spacecraft test stand. The satellite will survey the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating a cosmic clearinghouse of hundreds of millions of objects, which will be catalogued, providing a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the universe. Launch is scheduled no earlier than Dec. 7. Photo credit: NASA/Doug Kolkow