ITWire

The launch window for the Glory mission is a brief 48 seconds, so everything will have to go smoothly for its launch to be completed on Friday.

Also on board the rocket is another payload. The NASA Nanosatellite mission, called Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa), is a secondary payload that contains three tiny satellites called CubeSats.

These miniaturized satellies have a mass of only 1.33 kilograms and a volume of one liter. These small cube-shaped objects were designed by students at U.S. universities:

'¢    Montana State University (main campus: Missoula): Explorer-1 PRIME (E1P)

'¢    Kentucky State University at Frankfort: KySat-1

'¢    University of Colorado at Boulder: HERMES

The live coverage of the launch will be provided by NASA beginning at 7:30 a.m. PST. Check out NASA TV on the Web.