SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury News, Wired, etc: NASA’s new flying observatory finally flying

Published: January 18, 2008, 12:20 pm

It’s called SOFIA, for Stratospheric Observatory for Inrared Astronomy, and is an old Boeing 747 into which NASA, at sizable cost and long delay, has stuffed a German telescope. The Tracker remembers maybe ten years ago when then-director of NASA Dan Goldin went ballistic in public at a scientific meeting. He furiously lambasted a poor schmo - manning a SOFIA exhibit booth - for the program’s budget overruns. He probably had good reason to be steamed but the plane, after an estimated $600 million investment, is finally in test flights. Its pilots took it to NASA’s Ames Research Center between San Jose and San Francisco recently. I’ve been a little tardy getting to the stories, but several outlets this week reported it and the astronomer’s relief to finally see whether the big plane can do all that its designers hope. Ames is a good place for covering this story, as it is where NASA based and still has parked the new bird’s predecessor, a

[ Full article ]

Blog link

Comments