It's not every day NASA takes on a new crew member who's already had plenty of field time in space.
Nichelle Nichols, best known as Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek series, is about to fly on a real, honest-to-goodness NASA mission. The actress is hopping onboard NASA's Sofia observatory aircraft. Sofia doesn't travel all the way out of Earth's atmosphere into space, but it flies high enough to get views into deep space not possible from the ground.
Not a bad joyride for an 82-year-old.
Sofia (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is described as the world's largest airborne observatory, carrying a huge, gyro-stabilized telescope, cameras, spectrometers, photometers and more. It reads infrared energy to observe things like the births of stars, solar systems and nebulae, celestial bodies in our own solar system, complex molecules in space, black holes and more.
Nichols revealed her part in an upcoming Sofia mission on an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") session on Reddit, on Friday, July 31. She noted that this will be her second flight up to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, having previously taken part in a similar flight in 1977 on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory.
"It's an amazing experience," Nichols told Reddit. "You get a totally different perspective than from Earth. I do hope someone gets some great pictures."
She added that she's planning to stream as much of her experience as she can on StarPower, a website she helped found.
Nichols' flight on Sofia is scheduled for September 15, 2015. She has been an official ambassador for NASA since the 1960s, when she began working to recruit women and people of color as astronauts.
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