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| Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls (2010) |
On September 17, 2015 actress Nichelle Nichols, best known for her role as Lt. Uhura on "Star Trek: The Original Series", will be joining the crew of the SOFIA aircraft. SOFIA, or Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a modified Boeing 747 outfitted with a 100-inch telescope used to look at the universe during the flight and is meant to complement the Hubble Space Telescope and other orbital telescopes.
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| SOFIA |
Nichols, 82, suffered a mild stroke in June and has made a resilient recovery over the past couple of months and is looking forward to the coming mission. She has been an active advocate for NASA, serving as an astronaut recruit in the 1970s and 1980s to encourage women and minorities to join the space program, and participated in a similar flight in 1977 on the first airborne observatory, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) - a modified Lockheed C-141 Starlifter - which began operation in 1974.
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| KAO |
Nichols intends to use
StarPower, a site that enables celebrities to raise money for charities, to live share the event.
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