SOFIA Comes Out Of The Hangar With Finished Paint Job

First Test Flight Only a Few Months Away

October, 2006

NASA's freshly painted Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) 747SP aircraft sits outside a hangar at L-3 Communications Integrated Systems' facility in Waco, Texas. The observatory, which features a German-built 100-inch (2.5 meter) diameter infrared telescope weighing 20 tons, is approaching the flight test phase as part of a joint program by NASA and DLR (the German Aerospace Center, Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt). SOFIA's science and mission operations are being planned jointly by Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI). Once operational, SOFIA will be the world's primary infrared observatory during a mission lasting up to 20 years, as well as an outstanding laboratory for developing and testing instrumentation and detector technology, and a national education & public outreach facility putting educators from across the U.S. and Germany in contact with frontier scientific research.

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