Climb Aboard a Boeing 747 That NASA Turned Into the World's Biggest Flying Telescope

(upbeat music)

Let's say you've got a 747.

A perfectly good, if slightly aging wide body jet.

This 747 is 40 years old and NASA has owned it

for 20 of those years.

And if we can make out out of the backdrop behind the wing

sometime in that period it would be a really good idea

to cut a 16 by 23 foot hole in the plane.

It's not just any old hole in the fuselage,

it's for this.

This is SOFIA, which stands for stratospheric

observatory for infrared astronomy.

It's a massive flying telescope operated by NASA

and the german space agency DLR.

You might think that this is insanity or crazy idea.

And there was a time, especially as we were developing it,

because we ran into so many problems.

The door had to work just right.

And it took years to get that door to be just right.

Well once we got it working we were getting results

that can't be done any other way at this point.

SOFIA has a lot in common

with the Hubble space telescope, they're similar sizes.

But where Hubble concentrates on visible

and ultraviolet light,

which scientists use to make incredible full color images,

SOFIA looks primarily at infrared light,

which means it can be used to study things

like the clouds of gas that will give birth to new stars.

To get the best observations the plane flies into

the stratosphere and then opens it's massive door

so that the telescope can peer into space.

We climbed on board to have a look around with

Eric Becklin, SOFIA's chief scientist.

So we're inside a 747, you don't really,

when you get on as a passenger you don't really appreciate

the full height of the plane and you're making full use

of the cylinder.

Yeah it is huge.

There are only 30 telescopes that are larger than SOFIA

but we're flying in an aircraft.

[Jack] It's versatile too.

New equipment can be fitted to make different kinds

of observations.

Because it's a flying telescope, it can be positioned

nearly anywhere around the globe.

It's been used to study the atmospheres of Pluto and Mars

and to look into a black hole at the center of the galaxy.

There are also stars that must be forming there,

we don't know how but we have the best picture

because of this observatory how that is happening.

[Jack] The telescope is a marvel of engineering

with gyroscopes and precision bearings keeping it locked

on it's target, even through turbulence.

The thing I like about SOFIA is that it brings together

astronomy, which I love and I do, it brings together

airplanes, everybody is excited about airplanes.

But doing them together is really, very special.