| Space

The tension builds up – SOFIA to land at Cologne-Bonn Airport on Saturday at 06:50

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, is a joint project by the US space agency NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and is expected to operate for 20 years. This is its first ever visit to Europe, and on 18 September 2011 it will be present at German Aerospace Day, and visitors will have the chance to see it. On board will be the German instrument GREAT (German REceiver for Astronomy at Terahertz frequencies), responsible for separating the infrared radiation collected from space by the telescope and into its spectral components.

Those interested can follow the flight from the United States to Germany live as of 19:10 CEST at http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N747NA.

SOFIA
SOFIA


Sunrise: SOFIA – shortly after a scientific flight – at Palmdale, California, USA. Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

Information about all the activities during German Aerospace Day are available here: www.tagderluftundraumfahrt.de/en/index.php

The DLR Corporate Communications Online Team will report live on the 18th – in this blog, , via twitter.com/DLR_de (German), twitter.com/DLR_en (English), www.facebook.com/DLRde (German) and www.facebook.com/DLRen (English).

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