14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (German Aerospace Center or DLR) said recently that they are still hopeful that NASA will decide to continue its participation in the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) project. The current US budget proposal would cut American funding for the airborne telescope just weeks after the asset was finally completed.
DLR Director Johann-Dietrich Woerner said in a recent interview that Germany and the United States need to come together on this issue as soon as possible, especially considering that a major technical check is scheduled for SOFIA this June. If the project is to be dropped this September, then conducting this expensive maintenance check would become useless.
SOFIA is a 2.5-meter (100-inch) infrared telescope mounted in the aft section of a heavily-modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. It is able to fly above more than 99 percent of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere, a trait that enables it to capture unusual infrared images no other telescope is capable of producing. The aircraft is currently based at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in California.
“We are talking about something that is about 0.5 percent of NASA’s overall budget. The question of finding an additional partner is not today’s question. Today’s question is how to keep the mission going until 2016, as was stated in the original memorandum of understanding we had with NASA,” Woerner said, as quoted by Space News.