NASA's observatory in an airplane, SOFIA, takes last flight

Astronomers have been using a very special airplane to peer out. The SOFIA is an observatory that has been in the air for eight years. The last flight it took will be its last one.

The idea of SOFIA was to put a telescope into an airplane so it could fly above the water in the atmosphere. SOFIA was able to see further and with greater accuracy because the water Vapor interfered with readings. The SOFIA concept worked well and contributed to a number of astronomy discoveries, however, earlier this year NASA decided to retire the project. When compared to telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the observatory was not a good value proposition due to the costs of maintaining and running it.

SOFIA announced in 2020 that they had detected small amounts of water on the surface of the moon. It contributed to the findings about star formation and Earth's atmosphere.

The SOFIA mission would not have been possible without the hundreds of people who contributed their expertise to the mission.

NASA is looking for a new home for the airplane after SOFIA took its last flight. The torch of IR observations has already been taken up by the new space telescope

Paul Hertz is a senior advisor for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and a former director of the astrophysics division. SOFIA has left their mark on science.

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