How NASA's Flying Observatory Revealed Secrets About Pluto

The airplane was not a typical passenger jet or cargo aircraft but a mobile scientific observatory called SOFIA, which stands for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. On June 29, 2015, SOFIA was chasing a moving target in the sky: the shadow of the dwarf planet Pluto. Observing this event held incredible promise for Pluto scientists, but it meant getting SOFIA in exactly the right spot for them to see it.