Oct 12 2007
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had begun testing SOFIA, the highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that NASA intended to use as an airborne observatory for “first light” infrared observations of the universe. Before arriving at NASA’s DFRC, engineers had installed a 17-tonne (18.7-ton or 17,000-kilogram) telescope in the aircraft’s aft fuselage and had cut a 16-foot-high (4.9-meterhigh) telescope door in the fuselage. At DFRC, engineers had installed test instrumentation critical for the initial flight tests. In addition, they had equipped a telescope-cavity environmental-control system, designed to keep the telescope dry when the cavity door was closed, as well as when the craft had achieved the altitude required for operating the observatory. The first series of flight tests, conducted with the cavity door closed, would study the aerodynamics, structural integrity, stability and control, and handling qualities of the modified aircraft.
NASA, “Sofia Observatory Enters Aircraft Testing Phase,” news release 07-225, 12 October 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/oct/HQ_07225_sofia_first_flights.html (accessed 8 September 2010).
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