On the recordJune 3, 2015
I want to first thank the House Appropriations Committee for fully funding the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, program. The SOFIA program is something that is stationed in my district. It is a 747 airplane with a 100-inch telescope in the back. Some people ask why we would need this or why this is something that NASA is so excited about. It is because we have certain programs that are in the atmosphere, and on the ground today, many of them have restrictions, but SOFIA doesn't. SOFIA does things that other telescopes just can't do. First, it flies at 40,000 feet, so it gets above the water vapor. That is something that we just can't do from the ground. We can't do that type of science, those observations--we just can't do it--yet SOFIA does something that many other telescopes can't do. It does something that the Hubble can't do. It does something that our beloved James Webb Space Telescope, which is going to be launched in the next couple of years, cannot do. It lands, and we can upgrade it. If there is something new in 2015, we can put it on SOFIA. SOFIA can take off. We can do our projects, and we can do our experiments. It can land. If we have something new in 2016, we can do the same thing and so on and so forth. For the next 20 years, we will be flying SOFIA if this Congress continues to fund it. Last year, SOFIA was on the chopping block, and without the good leadership of our majority leader, it might have gone away.…
