A Pegasus XL air launched rocket successfully putd NASA’s IRIS spacecraft into orbit on 28 June 2013. The four stage rocket was air dropped from an L-1011 converted transport aircraft off the California coast at 0227GMT, with the first stage motor igniting seconds later.
The IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems under the NASA Explorer progamme, and will be used to image and analyst the Sun using its UV imagers and spectograph.