Malor Surgery

摘要

On Several nights this winter, in the frigid stratosphere over the Pacific Ocean, the pilots of a dramatically modified Boeing 747SP will relinquish control of the aircraft, and astronomical mission controllers will take over, steering the jumbo jet westward along a slightly curved star-tracking course at 520 mph. In the former passenger cabin where rows of seats used to be, two dozen astronomers and technicians at computer workstations will sit poised for an event unprecedented in the history of aerospace. At a computer command, a giant door in the rear fuselage, just behind the wings—a door nearly as wide and half again as high as one on a two-car garage— will open the aft left side of the aircraft, exposing an enormous cavity to the rarefied atmosphere. Inside this cavity, a reflecting telescope with a mirror nearly nine feet across will point toward an invisible celestial object and gather its light at far infrared wavelengths, while just feet beyond the telescope's end, air will whip past at nearly the speed of sound.