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NASA SOFIA

Space telescopes don't have to squint through the obscuring layer of Earth'southward atmosphere, but basis-based telescopes have the distinct reward of beingness easily accessed for repairs and tweaks. What lies between them? Information technology's a bird! Information technology's a plane! It's a bird-plane! (At present you have that song in your head. You lot're welcome.) No, it's really SOFIA, the airplane-mounted telescope with a remarkable history. NASA'south Ames Research Center only posted this video walkthrough of SOFIA's insides.

Originally designed as a Boeing 747SP widebody, the SOFIA aircraft was built on a modified 747 airframe with a stripped-downward fuselage, to save weight on the ultra-long flights for which it was adult. While information technology flies as SOFIA for NASA nether the call sign NASA747, originally the aircraft outset flew regular passenger service with Pan Am. Pan Am really invited Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh's widow, to christen the aircraft "Clipper Lindbergh" in 1977, on the 50th anniversary of Lucky Lindy's historic flying. At NASA'due south invitation, Erik Lindbergh — grandson of Charles — re-christened it "Clipper Lindbergh" in 2007.

The ii.v-meter telescope itself sits inside an airlock bulkhead that can open up while at cruising altitude, by mode of a special Raytheon-designed door in the plane's aft left side. This gives the telescope an unobstructed view of the skies, without sucking everyone out à la the terrible movie of your choice. It's gyro-stabilized, which keeps the telescope's center fixed stably on its target, while the observing terminate of the telescope — and its operator — gets to stay safely within the pressurized cabin. Mission control and scientific ops are in the centre, and at that place's even a public outreach and educational activity expanse up where beginning class would be.

The 747SP'due south long-haul design concept is a major asset to SOFIA's function as a flying observatory. Up to a higher place 99% of the water vapor in the atmosphere, the telescope can fly all night to stay in the best identify to look at any given affair in the sky, including and especially the aurora borealis. Launching satellites is risky and dearly expensive, but avgas is apparently nonetheless cheap enough to go along SOFIA flight for the nonce.

Imagery taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (similar to Hubble), overlaid with SOFIA imagery

Imagery taken past NASA's Spitzer Infinite Telescope (similar to Hubble), overlaid with SOFIA imagery

SOFIA has been in the news in the not-besides-long-ago. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek, took a 10-hour overnight observatory flight with SOFIA in late 2022, to spend telescope fourth dimension watching multiple star-forming regions and a protostar in Taurus, while training several educators. The observant reader may detect in the epitome below that Lt. Uhura was apparently accompanied by several Tribbles, which leaves some question equally to the ultimate fate of the aircraft. Evidently they are not as extinct as we were led to believe.

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