The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is an infrared telescope that flies - no joke -- aboard a 747 airplane that has a big hole cut out of the fuselage. It's the follow-up mission of Kuiper, a very successful but smaller telescope that took lots of great data from the cargo class section of a modified C-141. SOFIA is a much bigger 'scope (2.5 meters), and so will do much better work. It almost didn't though. During the notorious reign of NASA's Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate Mary Cleave (who is gone now), SOFIA was moments away from being axed. But pressure from scientists and others got SOFIA a reprieve, and things got better from there. Yesterday, it flew for the first time on a test run from Waco, Texas:
See the bulge in the back of the fuselage? That's where SOFIA sits. A door will ...
