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Flight Research Pilots

The flight crew of NASA's SOFIA airborne observatory includes (from left), flight engineer Marty Trout and pilots Bill Brockett and Frank Batteas.

 
Photo Number: ACD08-0005-073
Photo Date: January 14, 2008
 
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1280x1172 JPEG Image (584 KBytes)
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Photo
Description:
The flight crew of NASA's SOFIA airborne observatory includes (from left), flight engineer Marty Trout and pilots Bill Brockett and Frank Batteas.
 
Project
Description:
NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy - or SOFIA - made a brief visit to NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near San Jose, Calif., Jan. 14. Several thousand Ames employees and their families took the opportunity to view SOFIA during an open house that stretched well into the evening. SOFIA then flew on Jan. 15 to the newly established Aircraft Operations Facility operated by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, Calif., where it will be based during additional development, flight testing and its operational lifetime.

SOFIA is being developed as a world-class observatory complementing the Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory, which features a German-built 98.4-inch (2.5 meter) diameter infrared telescope weighing 20 metric tons mounted in a highly-modified Boeing 747SP aircraft, has begun its flight test phase in a joint program by NASA and DLR Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center). Major aircraft modifications and installation of the telescope was performed by L-3 Communications Integrated Systems facility at Waco, Texas. Systems integration and flight test operations are being conducted at NASA's Dryden Flight Resarch Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. SOFIA's science and mission operations are managed jointly by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI), and are based at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near San Jose, Calif. Once operational in the 2009-2010 period, 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.

 
NASA Photo by: Ames/Eric James
 
Keywords: SOFIA, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, Ames Research Center, first visit, Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility, Palmdale
 


Last Modified: January 24, 2008
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