Kennedy Countdown for Dec. 3, 2021

NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, arrived last month. Workers completed prelaunch testing and then integrated the spacecraft with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff is scheduled for December 9 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, or LCRD, moved another step closer to launch when a team of engineers attached the payload fairing containing its host satellite to a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The LCRD payload, hosted on the Department of Defense Space Test Program-3 mission, will demonstrate optical technology that could provide data rates up to 100 times better than commonly used radio frequency communications.