{"id":41334,"date":"2015-08-03T10:26:15","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T17:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=41334"},"modified":"2015-08-03T10:26:15","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T17:26:15","slug":"nichols-to-go-on-official-nasa-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2015\/08\/nichols-to-go-on-official-nasa-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Nichols To Go On Official NASA Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Nichelle Nichols<\/strong> will be flying on <em>NASA&#8217;<\/em>s <em>SOFIA<\/em> mission this September.<\/p>\n<p>According to <em>NASA<\/em>, <em>SOFIA<\/em> &#8220;is the largest airborne observatory in the world, capable of making observations that are impossible for even the largest and highest ground-based telescopes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Using a modified Boeing 747-SP, <em>SOFIA<\/em> uses a &#8220;2.5 meter gyro-stabilized telescope&#8221; to make observations ground-based telescopes simply can&#8217;t.&#8221; This includes &#8220;star birth and death, formation of new solar systems, planets, comets and asteroids in our solar system, and black holes at the center of galaxies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>SOFIA<\/em> does not, sadly, fly into space,&#8221; said Nichols. &#8220;It&#8217;s an airborne observatory, a massive telescope mounted inside a 747 flying as high as is possible. I was on a similar flight, the first airborne observatory, back in 1977. It&#8217;s an amazing experience, you get a totally different perspective than from Earth. I do hope someone gets some great pictures.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nichelle Nichols will be flying on NASA&#8217;s SOFIA mission this September. According to NASA, SOFIA&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413],"tags":[2698,2408,8563],"class_list":["post-41334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cast-crew","tag-nasa","tag-nichols","tag-sofia"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315-150x150.gif",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"newsphere-slider-full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"newsphere-featured":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false],"newsphere-medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NicholsNASA080315.gif",580,225,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a>","tag_info":"Cast &amp; Crew","comment_count":"1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41337,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41334\/revisions\/41337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}