ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION<br/> <br />NASA launched its latest solar observatory, the IRIS (INTERFACE REGION IMAGING SPECTROGRAPH) spacecraft, Thursday (June 27), whose mission is to answer a fundamental question of how the sun creates such intense energy.<br/> <br />The IRIS, a 7-foot-long, 403-pound spacecraft, is mounted to the nose of the winged Pegasus rocket for the climb into low-Earth orbit. It flew on its own after about 13 minutes from release.<br/> <br />The spacecraft will point a telescope at the interface region of the sun that lies between the surface and the million degree outer atmosphere called the corona.<br/> <br />It will improve scientists' understanding of how energy moves from the sun's surface to the glowing corona, heating up from 6,000 degrees to millions of degrees.<br/> <br />The IRIS mission, short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, calls for the 7-foot-long spacecraft to point its ultraviolet telescope at the sun to discern features as small as 150 miles across. It
