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 ...

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

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 Psyche mission aims to lift off October 12 — and be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid that may be the exposed core of an early planetary building block.

The Boeing 747SP jetliner is expected to make its final flight from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California to Tucson on Tuesday, December 13. The aircraft was modified to ...

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 ...

NASA’s Psyche mission aims to lift off October 12 — and be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid that may be the exposed core of an early planetary building block. CNN values your feedback 1.