Discover the legacy of NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), a modified C-141A Starlifter that advanced infrared astronomy for over 20 years. Learn how parts of this historic aircraft are now ...

The KAO came into the world as a replacement for the Convair 990 called the Galileo Observatory, which was destroyed in 1973 as a result of a mid-air collision. It was put together using the same ...

It was named the Kuiper Airborne Observatory in memory one of the pioneers of infra-red planetary astronomy, Gerald P. Kuiper of the University of Arizona. The observatory was in operation for about ...

NASA’s current flying telescope, SOFIA, is parked next to its predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, in 2008. NASA Ames/ Eric James . On June 29, ...

The Kuiper Airborne Observatory served NASA from 1974 to 1995, discovering the rings of Uranus, evidence of a black hole in the galactic center of the Milky Way, and more. NASA.

Seven years later, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory carried a 36-inch reflecting telescope aboard a converted Lockheed C-141 military cargo plane. Formerly a Pan American and later ...

SOFIA is the successor to NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, which was retired in 1995. Like Kuiper, SOFIA is optimized to observe in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In the 1990s, when SOFIA was proposed, a smaller flying infrared observatory, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, named after Dutch-born astronomer Gerard Kuiper, had been doing a similar job for ...

It will include 16 or 17 instrumented balloon flights extending through late next year, as well as sounding rocket flights and infrared observations using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO). The ...

It would be NASA’s successor to its flying telescope, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory or KAO: an infrared telescope mounted in a Lockheed C-141A.