VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- A NASA satellite that will study star and planet formations was put into orbit Saturday by a rocket ferried several miles above Earth by a jetliner.
The satellite was on a Pegasus XL rocket dropped from the belly of an L-1011 jetliner flying about 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean off the central California coast, NASA spokeswoman Donna Drelick said.The launch marks the beginning of a two-year, $64 million mission to learn more about the formation of stars and planets.
Scientists want to determine the composition of interstellar clouds and monitor how they cool as they collapse to form stars and planets, said Jim Sahli, spokesman for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., which will manage the mission.