Posted: Mon, Jul 10, 2006, 7:48 AM ET (1148 GMT)
NASA officials have decided to continue with the development of an airborne astronomy observatory, but may have to sacrifice a planned space-based telescope in order to fund the project. NASA administrator Michael Griffin told attendees of a meeting by the science subcommittees of the NASA Advisory Committee last week that NASA will move ahead with the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission. SOFIA features a 2.5-meter telescope mounted in the fuselage of a 747 jet. The project, which had fallen behind schedule, was nearly complete earlier this year when NASA decided not to include any funding for the project in its 2007 budget, pending a review on its status. To pay for continuing SOFIA, however, NASA now plans to turn the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), a planned space telescope that would test optical interferometry technqiues that would increase the resolution of images of other solar systems, into solely a technology development program. The launch of SIM had already been delayed by several years, into the middle of the next decade, under the 2007 budget proposal.
