SOFIA team tracks celestial targets

avpress ^ | Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

[BenLurkin]

PALMDALE - NASA's SOFIA infrared-observatory aircraft spent several nights parked on an unlit ramp next to its hangar as its telescope team got a working knowledge of how telescope operating systems interact and the experience of tracking celestial targets from the ground. Their primary celestial target was the North Star, NASA said.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, consists of a modified Boeing 747 jet fitted with a 22-ton German-built infrared telescope.

The aircraft is housed at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale.

In addition to establishing a functional baseline for operation of the telescope's control systems, the team of German and U.S. scientists and telescope operators evaluated the graphical user interface that will be the main connection between the observatory operators and its control systems, NASA said.

The data was gathered prior to the mid-April removal of the telescope's primary mirror assembly. After removal, the mirror will be sent to NASA's Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area for coating, NASA said.

The assembly will be reinstalled in the SOFIA aircraft in mid-August.

Systems integration and flight test operations are being conducted at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

SOFIA's science and mission operations are managed jointly by the Universities Space Research Association and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut, and are based at NASA's Ames Research Center.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the topic, BenLurkin.

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[KevinDavis]

[wastedyears]

I didn’t know we had anything like that.