NASA confirmed that the discovery has been made using its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) system (Image: NASA Goddard YouTube channel)NASA recently claimed in its blogpost that it will be announcing some interesting and exciting discovery regarding the Moon on Monday, October 26. The US-based space agency confirmed that the discovery has been made using its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) system. As per the blog, the teleconference pertaining to the revelation about the discovery will be at 12 PM EDT (9.30 PM IST) on October 26.
NASA has also hinted that this discovery will prove to be substantially crucial as far as their deep space exploration programme along with the efforts to learn about the Moon is concerned. Also, this discovery is important because it has come at such a time when NASA is actively preparing for its Artemis mission which will take the first woman and next man to the Moon’s surface in 2024 to prepare for its next giant leap that is its ultimate human exploration programme on Mars in early 2030s.
The briefing regarding the discovery will be made by Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters, Washington. Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Casey Honniball, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland and Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California.
Besides that, further delving into Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) the fact that is being deciphered is that it is the world’s largest airborne observatory. However, by its design, it is a Boeing 747SP plane with a cavity hole made into it to carry a large reflecting telescope, as cited by the ScienceAlert website.
Unlike, terrestrial telescope, SOFIA moves above in the sky to attain a distance of 11 km in Earth’s stratosphere while it provides a pristine view of the universe and solar system to its 9 metre telescope that generally gets hindered due to the atmosphere on the Earth. As a consequence of it, SOFIA is able to trace infrared wavelengths in the universe.
In the hindsight, instruments cladded on SOFIA have detected the presence of Oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars, infrared view of centre of Milky Way Galaxy, molecular bonds in the space including infrared measurements that have depicted astounding exoplanet collisions.
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