The airlock door opens at Building 2 of the Astrotech payload processing facility for ingress of the protective shipping container enclosing the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft.

The airlock door opens at Building 2 of the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, near Kennedy Space Center, for ingress of the protective shipping container enclosing the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft.

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. 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