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>> So this is our mission brief.
Engines start at ten after. Takeoff at 7:50. And landing at 5:25.
Telescope status?
>> It's ready to go.
>> Mission systems?
Good to go.
>> FIFI-LS also measured this source, but obviously cannot resolve the structure and velocity.
And this is a profile
as straight measures towards the center of this nebula,
and you see the complex dynamics that is going on as different shells and bluffs
expanding from the central white dwarf.
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>> For tonight, your safety techs:
Myself, John, and Juan.
Our mission director tonight is Nancy.
The doors are all closed and armed.
If there's an emergency or whatever,
and we have to open the doors, the safety techs
and mission director are responsible for them.
[Aircraft taking off]
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>> Here we are.
We're on this incredible flying telescope right now,
and about fifty feet behind me is an instrument that's
cryogenically frozen at four degrees above absolute zero,
which is blowing my mind at the moment, and right behind that,
the back half of this airplane is wide open,
and we've got this incredible device looking
out into the middle of a galaxy far, far away.
That's pretty cool.
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>>This is the view as if you were behind the telescope looking out the door.
The green thing in the center, that's the secondary mirror.
There's three mains holding up the secondary,
The large circle is the primary,
that's the secondary in the middle of the primary.
>> We're observing this one part of the galaxy and this one part
of the galaxy is where stars are born.
Just like you're born and have a life cycle,
stars do that as well, and it's happening all the time
in the universe,
and it tells us different things about the universe based
on where they're forming and why they're forming.
>> We look for signatures of certain elements like carbon
or nitrogen or oxygen, and it tells us something.
So we may not actually be able to see the stars forming,
but we can detect that they're forming
by looking for these signatures.
[Music]
On this mission, we're looking for oxygen lines.
Just the mere fact that we're breathing oxygen on land
that should be enough of a compelling story
to help feel a connection to space.
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>>Even in land navigation, you're used to navigating your way from point to point
to point over the surface of the Earth.
Whether you're in a car or an airplane or whatever.
That ain't the way this works at all.
The way this works is they're looking at an object that could be literally hundreds of light years away.
They got to take into account orbital mechanics, things of that nature.
And they calculate their way backwards, until they get to the Earth, and then they
got to take into account temperatures and winds and all kinds of things.
You think about all the little details that could affect that.
And they calculate backwards all the way down until they predict
where that location would be over the surface of the Earth.
>>As the Earth turns, to keep looking at one object,
optimally, you would fly a continuous curve.
But instead what we do is we fly little segments, so the pilot tweaks
the heading by a degree at a time.
Nancy says "Ok, we need another degree tweak"
and upstairs they say "Ok".
>>One degree left.
>>Roger.
The plane is in turbulence, and you feel
like the telescope is wobbling up and down, but from your frame
of reference, it's the telescope
that is staying perfectly stationary on this ball bearing,
and we're the ones that are in turbulence.
It's just fascinating to me that we can be
in the air observing an object in space,
and we can actually keep the telescope steady enough
to be able to observe it clearly and without wobble,
and it's, like, trying to look look through binoculars
out the back of your car --
>> It's great to see how this whole SOFIA structure works.
It's a really intricate puzzle,
and to see the pilots communicating
with the mission directors, communicating
with the scientists, and fine tuning this whole process
as we go --
>> Science isn't taught just in a silo.
Isn't just taught in chemistry class
or isn't just taught in physics class.
Instead, science crosses over boundaries --
>> That interaction with the people
who are doing the work is, it's amazing --
>> I think about my students careerwise.
They might not all be scientists,
but there might be other careers that they can endeavor
into because this is a whole support system here.
You need the engineers.
You need the technicians.
It's a big team effort in order for the science to move forward.
>> The beauty of a program like NASA is
that it can be very relatable.
I hope that one of the things that we're able to take away
from SOFIA to bring back to our community
is that we can connect really young students,
really old students, and everyone in between with the material.
>> It's beyond exciting, it's beyond fascinating, it's fantastic.
[Aircraft landing]
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