One of SOFIA's sites notes that NASA was considering a bigger platform back in 1974, with a Boeing 747SP being considered in 1977. The Boeing 747SP (Special Performance) was a promising platform.

NASA’s one-of-a-kind, modified Boeing 747SP airborne telescope platform is out of a job. The space agency announced Thursday that the jet—known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared ...

As announced earlier in 2022, with the end of this fiscal year, NASA retired, on September 30, 2022, its Boeing 747SP Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The aircraft ...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has recently begun sending back the first color images of Pluto and Charon, and they are spectacular. But prior to the probe making its close approach to Pluto on ...

NASA Boeing 747SP Boeing TeleScope. About the author: Daniel Patrascu. Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive ...

NASA's telescope-on-an-airplane is down for maintenance. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, aka SOFIA, is a modified Boeing 747SP with a telescope on board.

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) 747SP airborne telescope has been retired to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Arizona.

SOFIA, for which NASA partnered with the German space agency (DLR), is a flying observatory.More specifically, it's a Boeing 747SP aircraft with a massive hole in its size, through which a 106 ...

Boeing's 747SP is the runt of the litter, sitting at 184 feet, 9 inches long compared to the 747-100 (and the modernized ...