Astronomical objects emit many forms of energy, which neither the human eye nor ordinary telescopes can detect. Infrared is one form of this invisible energy. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is an airborne observatory that will study the universe in the infrared spectrum. Besides this contribution to science progress, SOFIA will be a major factor in the development of observational techniques, of new instrumentations, and in the education of young scientists and teachers in the discipline of infrared astronomy. SOFIA is expected to fly into the stratosphere, open the telescope cavity door, and point its telescope at the heavens three or four nights a week for at least twenty years.

NASA and the DLR German Aerospace Center worked together to create SOFIA-a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified by L-3 Communications Integrated Systems to accommodate a 2.5-meter reflecting telescope. SOFIA is the largest airborne observatory in the world, and will make observations that are impossible for even the largest and highest of ground-based telescopes. The observatory is being operated for NASA by a team of industry experts led by USRA. SOFIA's science and mission operations center is located at NASA's Ames Research Center in northern California; SOFIA itself is based at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base in southern California.

SOFIA is just one of the space-based observatory missions under NASA's Origins Program, which along with the ground-based observatories paves the way for future achievements. As each Origins mission makes radical advances in technology, innovations will be fed forward, from one generation of missions to the next.