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NARRATOR: Welcome to Kennedy NOW! A look at the progress of change at America's premiere spaceport!

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Kennedy launch teams were on the move in June, launching missions from facilities in California to improve

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our understanding of the sun and to show young engineers how to make future satellites better.

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NASA's Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, processed the agency's IRIS solar observatory mission and

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sent it aloft on a Pegasus rocket on June 27.

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Vandenberg Air Force Base hosted the Kennedy team so the spacecraft could be put into an orbit that will

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take it roughly over both of Earth's poles during each revolution.

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The launch capped a nearly three-week stretch that began when LSP engineers led by Garrett Skrobot

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packed a small booster with tiny, but fully functional, cubesats and launched

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them high above the Mojave Desert.

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The mission tested four payloads for an orbital mission next year that will see them deployed

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from a rocket during a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.

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The cubesats were designed and built by different teams, including one made of high school students

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from Florida. The students went through the same processes NASA developed during decades of cutting

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edge space missions.

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So even though the booster's flight didn't go exactly as planned, the engineers

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were still able to recover their payloads and record important data.

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By trying out experimental systems on small, inexpensive satellites, NASA hopes to show spacecraft

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designers better ways to build other satellites.

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Finally, closer to home, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex lifted the curtain on the

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Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit. Atlantis, the final shuttle to fly in space in 2011,

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is depicted as it was in orbit, with its cargo bay doors open and robotic arm extended.

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Bob Cabana: "It's my hope that some young boy or girl is going to see Atlantis in there during one of

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their visits, and it's going to put that spark in them. That spark to say, 'I want to fly, I want to be an

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astronaut, I want to explore.'"

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Surrounded by a theater, dozens of shuttle-era artifacts and scores of simulators,