ICON and GOLD missions will study Earth's little-understood upper atmosphere. Here are some recent science and technology articles that have featured both missions, as the GOLD launch approaches in late January and ICON later this year:

• For the first time, a NASA mission to study space weather will live on a commercial satellite  in The Verge (technology news). This article quotes ICON principal investigator Thomas Immel.
• NASA launches a mission to study Earth’s final frontier—the edge of space in Ars Technica (technology and science news)
• New NASA mission will explore key zone between Earth and space at CNN (headline news)
• Looking ahead: space missions for 2018 at Sky and Telescope (astronomy news)

The ICON mission is proceeding apace. High fives are in order since the team just completed its fourth operational readiness test (ORT). During an ORT, a dozen SSL Mission Operation Team Members join forces with two dozen spacecraft engineers from Orbital ATK to rehearse the first week of activities that will occur during ICON’s launch and early orbit. It’s an entire week of long days and intensive testing in ICON’s Mission Operations Center at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab, to simulate operation of the observatory. Spurred along by the fact that this was the final ORT before launch, the team worked together to bring it to a healthy and successful completion (simulating operations with a failed momentum wheel, no less). The next time these teams come together at SSL will be the actual launch day for ICON.

Dr. Manfred Bester, Manager of Mission Operations Center at the Space Sciences Lab of UC Berkeley, explains what he and his team do to prepare for the upcoming ICON launch.

"The most intense part is the immediate time before launch."

After passing its "Pre-Environmental Review” last week, the ICON spacecraft/observatory is now in environmental testing at Orbital ATK in Gilbert, AZ. We will run a number of tests -- such as vibration and acoustical tests -- over the following weeks that will simulate the launch and space environments that ICON will be exposed to. All the instruments continue to check out well, and we’re getting a lot of time on the observatory. All this testing and reviewing shows us that ICON is in great shape and will be ready to go when launch day arrives this summer. It’s all coming together!