NASA Flying Jet Observatory

SOFIA - Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or the stratospheric observatory of infrared astronomy. An amazing thing, but this is a flying observatory created on the basis of the Boeing 747s (special perfomance).
A 17-ton infrared telescope about 2.5 meters in diameter is mounted on an airplane behind a special door measuring 5 by 7 meters. In flight, the sliding door opens, and the telescope can conduct observations (the image is clickable).

Since the plane flies high in the stratosphere, atmospheric distortions are minimal and make it possible to conduct observations exceeding the quality of observation of ground stations. And since the telescope is not mounted on a satellite, it regularly appears on the ground, where it can be repaired, reprogrammed or improved.

This project is being carried out by NASA together with the German aerospace center DLR, and it is designed for at least the next 20 years. At the moment, this is the only flying observatory in the world that is on the ground and undergoing maintenance so that it can work for 20 years without a glitch.

The aircraft can be in the air for more than 12 hours and overcome during this time more than 12 thousand km. Its ceiling is over 13 km, i.e. it can fly over the troposphere and leave at the bottom 99.8% of the water vapor that interferes most with infrared observations.
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NASA claims that with this telescope, you can get unique images that are inaccessible to any other observatory, either on the Earth’s surface or in space. In addition, the mobility of the observatory makes it possible to better observe such phenomena as the explosion of supernovae or the flight of comets.



NASA previously used another flying observatory based on a converted C-141 military aircraft that operated from 1975 to 1995. The new observatory has a telescope of an order of magnitude better sensitivity.

While the observatory is being prepared for long-term work in Germany, scientists are making plans for its use, and hope to make at least one hundred observation flights in 2015.