NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has flown its first light flight — gathering light into the 2.5 metre telescope that peers out from a gash in its fuselage. On 25 May, the modified 747SP, once owned by Pan American, took off from Palmdale, California at 9:30 pm and flew all night, landing at 5:30 am, just before dawn, says SOFIA project scientist Erick Young. “It’s exhilarating,” says Young. “It’s the first time that we can really say we have an observatory.”

SOFIA’s potential advantages are numerous: Flying at 40,000 feet, its infrared instruments see light that water vapour in the atmosphere usually obscures. The jet can also go anywhere in the world, chasing after transient events in different parts of the sky. Finally, its instruments can be refreshed frequently as technology advances over the observatory’s planned 20 year lifetime. But the costly and late $3.4 billion mission has also had its share of turmoil since it was first formulated in 1991. It was nearly canceled in 2006, when it was temporarily axed from the NASA budget.

Young says the team is at work reducing the data for the first light image. He wouldn’t say what heavenly object was the target until a press release comes out in a day or two. Early science operations aren’t expected to begin until October, and ‘full operational capability’ — reaching 800 hours of observation time a year — isn’t expected until 2014.