Up All Night on NASA's Flying Telescope

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Source: Lauren Sommer, NASA

The new SOFIA observatory [Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy] isn't your average NASA project. Engineers took a 30-year old 747 airplane, cut a hole in the side and installed a 17-ton telescope. Most telescopes are either on the ground or somewhere in orbit, but SOFIA falls somewhere in the middle, flying around at about 40,000 feet.

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