We’d like to take a brief look back at a mission that is coming to a close – SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. This amazing observatory consists of a 2.7-meter reflecting telescope mounted inside a repurposed Boeing 747SP aircraft. The plane flies up between 38,000 and 45,000 feet to keep the infrared telescope above about 99 percent of the water in our atmosphere, reducing interference where ground-based telescopes cannot.

SOFIA became fully operational back in 2014, running numerous 10-hour observation flights from California, New Zealand, and Germany to look at everything from transient events such as eclipses and occultation as well as nebulae, black holes, and magnetic fields. We’ve covered many of their science results here on Daily Space and interviewed several lead authors.

Notably, data collected by SOFIA was used to find water on the Moon, measure atomic oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere, determine how magnetic fields control star formation, and study the composition of the interstellar medium. And that’s just a brief selection of results over the course of eight years, including a five-year primary mission and the current three-year extended mission wrapping up this summer.

On top of these scientific accomplishments, SOFIA has hosted hundreds of teachers on their research flights with their Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program, providing those education professionals with hands-on experience and training that they could take back to their classrooms.

While we are sad to see the end of SOFIA’s mission at the end of September this year, we are pleased to have been able to cover all of that amazing science. SOFIA has one last scheduled observing run out of New Zealand, and we expect the science results will be amazing, as always.

We’ll have a link to USRA’s statement about the end of the SOFIA mission that includes links to many of the scientific results from the past eight years. We hope you find them as interesting as we did.

Ad Astra, SOFIA.

More Information

USRA press release