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Telescope-Toting Jet Gets Trial Run

Irene Klotz, Discovery News

Photos

SOFIA's Future Home

Nov. 9, 2007 -- NASA has begun testing a modified jet designed to house a sensitive infrared telescope that will offer astronomers a new window on the ever-evolving Milky Way.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, known by its acronym SOFIA, is intended to operate at altitudes up to 45,000 feet, a perch that would put it above 99 percent of Earth's atmospheric water vapor, which blocks wavelengths from reaching the ground.

"In the visible and ultraviolet, you're mainly looking at stars," said SOFIA chief scientist Eric Becklin, an astrophysicist with the University of California at Los Angeles. "When you look in infrared you see stars, but also see the dust and gas those stars formed from or are throwing off as they die. You really get a different view of the universe."

"The most exciting science is really trying to understand the chemistry and, potentially, the biology that's going on in space, and really getting to the heart of the question, did life form here on Earth, or did it form out in space?" Becklin added.

SOFIA's scientific agenda includes studying star formation in the Milky Way galaxy, determining the chemical composition of the interstellar medium and seeing through the dust hiding the black hole at the center of the galaxy.

"We can open up some wavelengths that are impossible to see from any ground-based observatory," said SOFIA science program manager Ed Austin, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

SOFIA also is less expensive to build and operate than space-based observatories and can be quickly positioned to view cosmic phenomena such as approaching comets.