The L-1011 aircraft soars through the sky over the Atlantic Ocean with a Pegasus XL rocket attached underneath.

The L-1011 aircraft soars through the sky over the Atlantic Ocean with a Pegasus XL rocket, containing NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), attached underneath. The rocket will be dropped from the aircraft at 3:14 p.m. EST. Over the next few days, the mission team will insure that the spacecraft is functioning properly. The SORCE science instruments will then be turned on and their health verified. Approximately 21 days after launch, if all is going well, the instruments will start initial science data collection and calibration will begin. The spacecraft will study the Sun's influence on our Earth and will measure from space how the Sun affects the Earth's ozone layer, atmospheric circulation, clouds, and oceans. This mission is a joint partnership between NASA and the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado. [Photo courtesy of Jeff Caplan, Langley Research]