Jun 16, 2013 ... The modified 747 has a bit of a science- fiction feel: Scientists, mission directors
and telescope ... etrating infrared light, might be aimed at.
News 8 Sunday, June 16, 2013
Orange County Register
1
Focus | SCIENCE
Teachers Susan Groff and Clifford Gerstman laugh during a tour of the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility.
TEACHERS IN ORBIT OVER TRIP
NASA has Santa Ana educators flying high after a 5,000-mile, 10-hour mission on a research plane. Two Santa Ana teachers excitedly strapped themselves into a NASA research plane with a 19-ton telescope mounted in the back, the plane casting tall shadows on parched desert sands as it rolled down the runway for an evening takeoff. Soon the plane, called SOFIA, was soaring into the night sky. It was the PAT moment that the two BRENNAN teachers, Cliff Gerstman REGISTER and Susan Groff, had WRITER been anticipating for more than a year. That was when they, along with two high school teachers from Idaho, learned that the space agency had chosen them to be its next educational ambassadors. For Gerstman, a longtime follower of SOFIA and similar NASA projects, the wait was even longer. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for 13 years,” he said.
PHOTOS: JOSH MORGAN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy is a modified 747 capable of flying at more than 45,000 feet.
AIRBORNE OBSERVATORY NASA’s airborne telescope measures infrared light that is invisible to the human eye. The telescope flies high above atmospheric interference mounted inside a modified 747 airplane.
TELESCOPE DETAILS: Airplane interior
DETAILED BELOW
Water vapor absorbs infrared light, so the telescope is flown high in the atmosphere to avoid it.
Exterior opening Infrared light
SCIENCE-FICTION AURA The modified 747 has a bit of a sciencefiction feel: Scientists, mission directors and telescope operators sit behind banks of computer screens oriented toward the rear of the plane, where the telescope is housed. And when its hatch slides open, the telescope, viewing the universe in dust-penetrating infrared light, might be aimed at the web-like remnants of an exploded star or a mysterious ring of debris around the central black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. The plane can fly to more than 45,000 feet, a good deal higher than most commercial aircraft. But as flight organizers frequently tell curious questioners, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy does not go into space. Still, on this flight, the black void outside the windows was only occasionally stitched with lightning from beneath. Star fields could be seen on the computer monitors, or a single star might dominate the screen, zoomed into a large blob of light so operators could check the telescope’s functions. It was hard to shake the feeling that the plane and its occupants were reaching out into deep space, which seemed to be closer than ever. “It’s a compromise between groundbased astronomy and space-based astronomy,” Casey Byrne, a recent college graduate who helped create some of the SOFIA telescope’s software, told Gerstman. “It’s in the middle.” The plan was to fly high as far as Missouri, then head southwest, toward Texas, returning across the Southwest to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale – a total of about 5,000 miles, all in one 10-hour nighttime cruise. And although this was mainly a checkout flight to calibrate equipment and test a newly upgraded camera, at least one object of interest, a planetary nebula – the remnant of a stellar explosion – was expected to come within the telescope’s view. At first, the flight seemed to go just fine. The telescope door slid open and began taking in infrared light. Sealed off from the rest of the plane by
Infrared light detected by telescope
Mirrors Controls and instruments Pressure wall separates the plane interior from the exposed telescope.
Telescope rotates independently of the airplane to stay level.
Source: NASA
Maxwell Henderson / The Register
Ralph Peterson of Bancroft, Idaho points out performance data from SOFIA’s telescope at the ambassadors’ work station to Jo Dodds, left, Susan Groff, middle left, and John Miles during a flight on June 4. “This isn’t just science,” Peterson says. “It’s the cutting edge of science.”
a pressure wall, the telescope rides on an ultra-thin bed of super-cooled oil. That, along with gyroscopes attached to the scope, dampens vibrations, including from the plane’s engines, to keep the telescope stable. “It can handle moderate turbulence, and keep the star exactly centered,” said Luke Keller, an associate physics professor at Ithaca College in New York and part of the team that built the SOFIA telescope’s camera. The teachers sat at a console, watching flight and telescope information flicker across the screens, and took their turns sitting in the cockpit – one flight up on the two-story aircraft.
Among the images captured by SOFIA’s infrared telescope is this glimpse of the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It shows a ring of gas and dust that is orbiting a supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s center. The bright material is believed to be falling into the black hole; the unseen hole itself is where the arms of the ‘Y’shaped, in-falling material intersect.
COURAGEOUS MISSION Like the other teachers, Groff wore a blue flight jacket decorated with NASA patches, a perk for the education ambassadors. The color of an additional item of apparel seemed to match: a blue scarf wound around her head. Groff had been diagnosed with breast cancer only months before her flight, and chemotherapy had left her scalp bare. She teaches biology at Santa Ana’s Middle College High School, and when her students heard about the diagnosis they took up a collection so she could buy herself a wig. But Groff said she’s grown accus-
tomed to her lack of hair, even if some people seem shocked when they first see it. “I call it my Russian peasant look,” she said. The life-changing diagnosis did not dissuade her from taking the SOFIA flight. “I’m a very determined person,” she said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Gerstman, meanwhile, turned out to be a bit of a class clown, though one who uses humor in the service of science. He teaches physics, also at Middle College High School, and is a fountain of rapid-fire jokes, puns and impromptu serenades. “SOFI-AHH, we’re going to fly on SOFI-AHH,” he sang during the tour through Educators are inthe airplane’s vited to fly on hangar, evoking NASA’s SOFIA rethe musical “West search plane for Side Story” but two reasons, prosubstituting lyr- gram officials say. ics he’d written One, so they can just for the occa- carry their knowledge and excitesion. The idea of the ment about the ambassador pro- flight back to their gram is, in part, to students as well as carry the thrill of the broader comexperimental sci- munity. And two, ence back to their to enhance the castudents. But it’s reers and experialso to enhance ence of the teachthe lives of the ers themselves. teachers them- They must submit essays explaining selves. “It’s been how they will comshown that teach- municate what ers who partici- they learn on the pate in a science flights, and, once experience stay in chosen from a the classroom large pool of applilonger, and their cants, must take students do bet- an online, graduter,” said Nicholas ate-level course in Veronico, a NASA astronomy. public affairs officer who accompanied the teachers on the flight. “This isn’t just science,” said Ralph Peterson, one of the two teachers from Idaho. “It’s the cutting edge of science.” But cutting-edge science comes with more than its share of surprises, and frustrations. A SOFIA flight the previous week had been cut short because of problems with the telescope’s power, and the gremlins struck again: This time, it was the telescope’s batteries running low. After consulting with engineers on the ground, the flight team decided to call it a night. “I’m not disappointed at all,” Gerstman said. “I got to fly higher than usual, I got to talk to scientists, I learned a lot.”
WHY IT MATTERS
Participants of the SOFIA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors Program walk off NASA’s SOFIA aircraft after an instruments test flight on June 4. The flight was an opportunity for ambassadors to shadow NASA scientists during a SOFIA mission.
NASA
