Nichelle Nichols Embarked on NASA Mission This Week.

Nichelle Nichols NASA
(image via Star Power)


Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols has shown no signs of stopping after suffering a minor stroke earlier this summer. Last month Nichols announced, during a Reddit AMA that she would be part of an upcoming NASA mission, SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy). The project is a telescope that operates from space and is housed inside of a 747, that flies 50,000 feet above the Earth. According to NASA, “SOFIA is the largest airborne observatory in the world, capable of making observations that are impossible for even the largest and highest ground-based telescopes.”

Earlier this week, Nichols completed the mission. She shared some information about her journey via Twitter, during a Q&A session hosted by NASA.


Nichols also described the mission on her blog,

This SOFIA flight will be observing star-forming regions, first in the constellation Sagittarius, then Aquila and Cygnus. They’ll be utilizing radio telescopes to detect emission from ionized hydrogen produced by young stars. Finally, we’ll be looking at a protostar in Taurus.