Provided by NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center
We have heard of SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) several times, but don’t know how and where it works. SOFIA, a joint program of NASA and the German Aerospace Center DLR, works at altitudes between 39,000 and 45,000 feet in the atmosphere. The complete observatory is set up in an advanced Boeing 747SP aircraft which contains a 19-ton telescope with an effective diameter of 2.5 meters to capture the astronomical body in the space. SOFIA is capable to capture the view of a spectral region which is very hard to view from Earth using space telescope. You can get complete information in the above video.
A joint program of NASA and the German Aerospace Center DLR, the SOFIA observatory is based at NASA's Science and Aircraft Integration Facility in Palmdale, Calif., a satellite facility of the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. NASA's Ames Research Center manages the science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut.