FLYING TELESCOPE COMING TO DRYDEN.

Byline: JIM SKEEN

Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE -- A flying telescope that will become one of the major programs at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center is expected to be flown from Texas to Edwards Air Force Base in the next few weeks.

A heavily modified Boeing 747 is carrying the 45,000-pound telescope called the stratospheric observatory for infrared astronomy or SOFIA. It is dubbed the world's largest portable telescope.

The airplane, now housed at a contractor facility in Waco, Texas, made its first flight on Thursday and another is scheduled for May 8.

"These are functional test flights to make sure everything is working and that they are not damaging the telescope," said Dryden spokesman Alan Brown.

Dryden is managing the flying-telescope program -- a partnership with NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California and the German Aerospace Center. More than 100 people will be involved in the program at Dryden.

The airplane will be flown to Dryden in either late May or in June.

The airplane carrying SOFIA, named the Clipper Lindbergh, will stay in Texas for a special event on May 21, the 80th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's historic solo flight from New York to Paris. The airplane was originally a jetliner for Pan-Am airlines and had been christened by Lindbergh by Charles Lindbergh's widow, Anne Murrow Lindbergh, in a ceremony on the 50th anniversary of the New York to Paris flight.

The airplane underwent major modifications at L-3 Communications Integrated Systems in Waco, including the cutting of a 16-foot tall opening in its aft fuselage to allow the telescope to look out. A sliding door was installed.

For three to four years, Dryden will be expanding the aircraft's flight envelope and conducting some initial science experiments.

After four or five years, SOFIA will be fully operational and flying as many as 960 hours of science observations a year.

None of Dryden's hangars can handle an aircraft the size of a Boeing 747, so officials are planning to temporarily house the airplane in an Air Force hangar on base. NASA officials are in discussions about possibly housing the aircraft at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale.