WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Technicians monitor the progress as NASA's TDRS-M satellite, enclosed in its payload fairing, is lowered onto a transport vehicle inside the Astrotech facility near NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The TDRS-M is the latest spacecraft destined for the agency's constellation of communications satellites that allows nearly continuous contact with orbiting spacecraft ranging from the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope to the array of scientific observatories. Liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is scheduled to take place from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Aug. 18 at 8:03 a.m. EDT