NASA to announce ‘exciting new discovery’ about Moon today - Hindustan Times
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NASA to announce ‘exciting new discovery’ about Moon today

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | Byhindustantimes.com | Edited by Karan Manral
Oct 26, 2020 08:34 AM IST

NASA will make the announcement from its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a modified Boeing 747 plane, which is the world’s largest airborne observatory.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will on Monday announce an ‘exciting new discovery’ about the Moon from its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).

The moon rises behind the storage tanks of a local oil refinery in Omsk, Russia June 5, 2020 (REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko/File Photo)
The moon rises behind the storage tanks of a local oil refinery in Omsk, Russia June 5, 2020 (REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko/File Photo)

The US space agency will do a live audio broadcast of its teleconference on its official website at 12 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) or 9:30 pm as per the Indian Standard Time (IST). The teleconference will also be broadcast on NASA’s official YouTube channel.

Announcing the teleconference in a statement last week, the space agency had said, “This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration.” The agency had further referred to its ambitious Artemis program, under which it will send the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface in 2024 “to prepare for our next giant leap: human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s”.

The teleconference will be addressed by Paul Hertz, an Astrophysics division director at NASA headquarters in Washington; Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration at NASA headquarters; Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Naseem Rangawala, project scientists for the SOFIA mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California.

NASA’s SOFIA, which is the world’s largest airborne observatory, is a modified Boeing 747 and has a nearly nine foot telescope. SOFIA flies high in the atmosphere, thus providing the telescope with a clear view of the universe and objects in the solar system. It flies above 99% of the atmosphere’s water vapour and observes infrared wavelengths and can also detect phenomena which are impossible to be seen with visible light.

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