Pegasus Selected for ICON Launch

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The Orbital Pegasus launch system was selected by NASA Launch Services to carry ICON into orbit. ICON will be launched over the Pacific Ocean after taking off from Kwajalein Atoll on the Orbital L-1011 that is part of the Pegasus launch system. Some pictures and discussion of the launch system can be found here. Here’s a synopsis of the launch system.

It’s a great way to get to space, used successfully by many Explorers in the past.

ICON Confirmed – Proceed to Implementation

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On October 29th 2014, the ICON mission was reviewed at NASA Headquarters, where the project presented the status of the project, focusing on the work that had been done to design and formulate the mission to the Science Mission Directorate and the Deputy Administrator for Programs at NASA HQ. At this review ICON was successfully confirmed and was directed to proceed with formulation the mission.

The team has been working together through the successful Mission Preliminary Design Review in July and in the months that followed to reach this key milestones. Preparation for this step has also been a focus for colleagues in the Explorers Office at Goddard Space Flight Center and in the Heliophysics Division at HQ. Everyone involved is excited to proceed with the implementation of the mission!

ICON Passes Preliminary Design Review

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The ICON Mission has now passed its Preliminary Design Review, where it is determined whether the design of the observatory and ground segment meet the mission requirements. After a season of 35 peer and design reviews that started back in April, the documentation and design for the Explorer were delivered and presented to the Standing Review Board at Orbital. Congratulations to the whole team are due, it has been an amazing effort!

ICON Passes System Requirements Review

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The ICON mission has passed its System Requirements Review, where the flowdown of top level requirements is traced through all aspects of mission implementation. We’ve gotten very good input from our Standing Review Board, whose key concerns become top priorities for the team to close out. Every NASA mission goes through this step on their way to the first design reviews, and we’re able to proceed with confidence that the team has a complete and verifiable set of requirements in hand. ICON has had a great systems engineering effort from the start and the mission, spacecraft and payload teams have been working together for years to get ready for this. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard on this review!

ICON Science Team Kicks Off

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The ICON science team kicked off their effort in a meeting in November 2013. As the ICON instruments and spacecraft take shape, the science team will provide guidance, scientific oversight of the requirements and be developing the science data processing to enable ICON to deliver scientifically valuable products as quickly as possibly after launch. For more information on the team, go here.
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ICON skin is based on Greytness by Adammer
Background image, courtesy of NASA, is a derivitave of photograph taken by D. Pettit from the ISS, used under Creative Commons license