SOFIA Head to New Zealand for its Southern Deployment

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, departed from its base operations in Palmdale, California on June 12 and ferried to Christchurch, New Zealand to complete a five-week mission to study celestial objects that are better observed from the Southern Hemisphere.
This video shows highlights of the various science objectives the team expects to complete, including observing an occultation of the dwarf planet Pluto on June 29.

SOFIA is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California. NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, manages SOFIA’s science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA; Columbia, Md.) and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI; University of Stuttgart).