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Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket will take about 11 minutes to place NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, satellite into a roughly 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit after an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast.

The nearly 53,000-pound (24-metric ton) rocket will drop from the belly of a modified L-1011 carrier plane, named Stargazer, flying on an easterly path over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of 39,000 feet (11,900 meters).

The Pegasus rocket, launching on its 44th orbital mission, will fire three solid-fueled stages in succession, then release NASA’s ICON satellite into orbit to begin a mission studying how weather in Earth’s atmosphere influences plasma conditions at the edge of space in the ionosphere, a boundary that can interfere with radio communications and satellite navigation.

The images below were recorded from a previous flight.

Data source: NASA/Northrop Grumman

T-00:00: Pegasus Drop

T+00:05: First Stage Ignition

T+00:36: Max-Q

T+01:17: First Stage Burnout

T+01:33: First Stage Separation/Second Stage Ignition

T+02:10: Fairing Jettison

T+02:48: Second Stage Burnout

T+07:00: Second Stage Separation

T+07:11: Third Stage Ignition



T+08:20: Third Stage Burnout

T+11:20: ICON Separation

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.