An Orbital Sciences Minotaur V rocket carrying the Moon-bound LADEE spacecraft sits on Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0B at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

[Via Satellite 09-06-13] Orbital Sciences Corporation is in final preparations for the launch of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft aboard its new Minotaur 5 rocket. The vehicle is slated for launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia on Friday, Sept. 6, 2013.

NASA’s LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. LADEE will mark the first lunar launch from the NASA Wallops facility and Orbital’s first Minotaur rocket launch of a payload that will travel beyond low-Earth orbit.

The Minotaur 5 is a five-stage space launch vehicle designed, built and operated by Orbital for the U.S. Air Force. It uses three decommissioned Peacekeeper government-supplied booster stages that Orbital combines with commercial motors for the upper two stages to produce a low-cost rocket for launching smaller spacecraft into low-Earth orbit and higher-energy trajectories, such as the trans-lunar flight of the LADEE mission.