NASA's PACE spacecraft launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:33 a.m. EST Thursday, February 8! Congratulations to all, including everyone at ESI, who were involved with HARP2! 

The three instruments onboard are key parts of the PACE spacecraft: Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) and the two polarimeters, Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration (SPEXone) and Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 (HARP2); which was built at UMBC's Earth and Space Institute. Learn more about these instruments in this visualization by the NASA GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio: "PACE orbit with swaths and instrument fields of view." 

View the launch and learn more about the mission here on YouTube: "SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches NASA's PACE-Payload." Be sure to keep up with the PACE spacecraft mission on the PACE mission blog!

(Photo credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio)