Posted by Raimondo Pictet | 0 comments
Sofia’s Doors Open
The SOFIA airborne telescope successfully passed its most important test flight on December 18th.
SOFIA stands for “Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy”. It is actually a 2.5 meter diameter reflecting telescope mounted in a Boeing 747, that will collect infrared light in the stratosphere to avoid 99% of our atmosphere’s humidity that blurs images. The greatest engineering difficulty of the project has been to design a huge door on the side of the aircraft that can open in flight to let the telescope peer into the night sky. On December 18th the door was fully opened in flight for the first time, and at 400 km/h (250 mph).
“Everything went well,” said Bob Meyer, program manager at Dryden Flight Research Center. “No adjustments or correction were needed. Nothing shook loose or got damaged”.*
Test flights at different speeds and altitudes will continue through spring of this year. First observations should be made around fall.
Click here for the complete review on SOFIA (and airborne astronomy in general) I posted a month ago.
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*Source: Science@NASA
