SOFIA flying observatory takes final flight

Grounded for good

However regardless of its accomplishments, the just lately printed decadal survey, additionally known as Astro2020, said that SOFIA’s yearly working price ticket of $86 million USD — on par with the Hubble Area Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory — couldn’t be justified by its “modest” scientific output as measured by the variety of printed papers primarily based on knowledge taken from the telescope. 

From 2014 to 2020, the survey stated, SOFIA flights resulted in 178 scientific papers. Hubble and Chandra knowledge mixed have been utilized in greater than 2,700 papers over that very same interval. “The committee discovered no path by which SOFIA can considerably enhance its scientific output to a level that’s commensurate with its price,” the survey stated. Finally, the committee endorsed NASA’s present plan to finish SOFIA’s operations.

However SOFIA’s six devices coated a wavelength vary of 0.3 to 1,600 µm — basically all the infrared spectrum. It is a vary JWST can not replicate. Though its 6.5-meter mirror is bigger, JWST solely observes from 0.6 to twenty-eight.3 μm. So, SOFIA might see into the far infrared, revealing parts of the universe completely inaccessible to JWST.

“The lack of SOFIA merely means lack of entry to the far-infrared window for no less than the subsequent 10 years,” says Dario Fadda, a senior scientist in astronomy on the SOFIA Science Middle.

Fadda and Ashton each fear shutting down SOFIA will push college students and early-career researchers away from far-infrared analysis and into different wavelength regimes. Each are additionally involved that as older scientists skilled with the sort of knowledge SOFIA churned out retire, that institutional information will probably be misplaced and can must be rebuilt. 

“SOFIA was not solely vital for the science which was executed, but in addition to protect a nucleus of individuals with information of infrared astronomy. As with every human achievement, science wants continuity,” Fadda says.

However there are nonetheless helpful takeaways from SOFIA’s success. “I believe the lesson of SOFIA is that there’s some science that you simply simply cannot get by constructing a scaled-up model of one thing else, with larger mirrors, extra detectors, and so forth.,” says Ashton. “I hope it serves as a reminder that generally the very best software for the job would possibly look wildly completely different than something you’ve got ever seen earlier than.”

SOFIA principal techniques engineer Nancy McKown, who beforehand served because the observatory’s Mission Operations Supervisor and Mission Director, flew greater than 100 occasions on the plane, together with its first mild flight in 2010. “I cherish the reminiscences of the scientists’ smiles and shouts of pleasure when a tough commentary was executed flawlessly,” she says, admitting her final flights on SOFIA have been bittersweet.

There are not any present plans for a future flying observatory, however the proposed Origins Space Telescope, which might probably launch in 2035, would reopen the far infrared to astronomers. Alternatively, the Astro2020 committee recommended improvement of a mixture X-ray and infrared space telescope. However even when proposed and picked up by funding companies, its launch can be simply as far off.

Nonetheless, McKown stays hopeful. “There could also be some gaps now, however I’m assured that the thirst for information will maintain it within the lengthy view of the massive image,” she says. “In spite of everything, the info will nonetheless be there for us to seize sooner or later.”