Post by Ykato on Jan 22, 2013 22:49:56 GMT 12
An airborne telescope prepares for takeoff
Air Force Plant 42 may be largely unknown by the general public, but it has a long and storied history in aerospace circles. Located in Palmdale, California, in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles and south of Edwards Air Force Base, Plant 42 is a government-owned airfield that hosts, or has adjacent to it, manufacturing facilities for several aerospace companies, including Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. During the Cold War, these facilities built a number of famous aircraft, from the SR-71 to the B-2. Plant 42’s Site 1 was where Rockwell (now part of Boeing) assembled all the Space Shuttle orbiters, from Enterprise to Endeavour.
On the opposite side of Plant 42 from Site 1 is Site 9, which also belonged originally to Rockwell. Here, from the early 1980s through the mid 1990s, the company built and maintained B-1B bombers. Today, Site 9 serves a very different purpose: it’s the home to NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility. The large hangar at Site 9 now houses several aircraft used by the space agency for earth and space science research, from a pair of ER-2 planes (the civilian version of the U-2) to a modified 747 known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA.
The first round of routine science observations, called Cycle 1, is slated to begin this spring, after the completion of checkout flights of the aircraft and commissioning of SOFIA’s four instruments. While most of those flights will be based out of Palmdale, the program plans a “deployment†of the observatory to New Zealand in July to allow for observations of objects visible only in the southern hemisphere.
Full Item:
www.thespacereview.com/article/2220/1
Air Force Plant 42 may be largely unknown by the general public, but it has a long and storied history in aerospace circles. Located in Palmdale, California, in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles and south of Edwards Air Force Base, Plant 42 is a government-owned airfield that hosts, or has adjacent to it, manufacturing facilities for several aerospace companies, including Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. During the Cold War, these facilities built a number of famous aircraft, from the SR-71 to the B-2. Plant 42’s Site 1 was where Rockwell (now part of Boeing) assembled all the Space Shuttle orbiters, from Enterprise to Endeavour.
On the opposite side of Plant 42 from Site 1 is Site 9, which also belonged originally to Rockwell. Here, from the early 1980s through the mid 1990s, the company built and maintained B-1B bombers. Today, Site 9 serves a very different purpose: it’s the home to NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility. The large hangar at Site 9 now houses several aircraft used by the space agency for earth and space science research, from a pair of ER-2 planes (the civilian version of the U-2) to a modified 747 known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA.
The first round of routine science observations, called Cycle 1, is slated to begin this spring, after the completion of checkout flights of the aircraft and commissioning of SOFIA’s four instruments. While most of those flights will be based out of Palmdale, the program plans a “deployment†of the observatory to New Zealand in July to allow for observations of objects visible only in the southern hemisphere.
Full Item:
www.thespacereview.com/article/2220/1