La Nasa announced the termination in September 2022 of the Sofia mission, an infrared stratospheric observatory installed in a specially modified Boeing 747. Operated jointly with the German space agency DLR, the Jumbo jet and its teams cost 85 million dollars a year and no longer provide enough results, according to the ten-year report of the American Academy of Sciences, published in 2020
“Sofia’s scientific productivity no longer justifies the expense” and “its capabilities do not correspond significantly to the objectives of the coming decade”, summarize the agencies in their press release. “Nasa has an obligation to follow the recommendations” of the academy, explains Walther Pelzer, head of the German space agency.
The use of an infrared telescope at high altitude makes it possible to overcome the alterations undergone by light when it passes through the densest layers of the atmosphere. If the end of a mission necessarily generates frustrations, the scientific community concedes that the observatory has only allowed the publication of a handful of significant articles, while it is the most expensive astronomical project behind the Hubble and James Webb space observatories.
Swarms of pitfalls
The increase in oil prices contributed to the retirement of this platform developed from an old Boeing 747SP, a short version of the very greedy four-jet engine. The device was delivered in 1977 to the Pan Am company and then operated by United Airlines, which had mothballed it near Las Vegas before it was bought by NASA.
The history of Sofia, English acronym of Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (stratospheric observatory of infrared astronomy), was strewn with pitfalls. The project was launched in 1984 by the United States, joined in 1987 by West Germany, in order to replace the Kuiper airborne telescope, which provided extremely satisfactory results, such as the discovery of the rings of Uranus and the detection of water in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. The budget cuts suffered by NASA in the wake of the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, combined with austerity following reunification on the German side, put the program a few years behind schedule.
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In 2002, United Airlines, which was to bear the cost of operating the aircraft, went bankrupt. At the same time, three companies chosen successively to make the sliding door allowing the telescope to operate also went bankrupt. The cost of the project has already doubled, exceeding 300 million dollars, but the first flight finally takes place in 2007. The troubles are not over, however: the flight behavior of the aircraft when the door is open gives thread to difficult for the pilots, and it was only in 2010 that the first observations could begin, timidly. Full operational capability was declared in 2014. Until that now announced end…