Scheduling and flight planning will be handled by the SMO staff and is not the responsibility of the GI. However, an understanding of the flight planning process and the restrictions inherent to airborne astronomy may be useful in preparing a successful proposal.
The most distinctive aspect of SOFIA flight planning is the interdependency of the targets observed in a flight. Because the azimuthal pointing is controlled primarily by the aircraft heading and because, in normal operations, the take-off and landing air fields are the same, efficient flight plans must generally balance East-bound with West-bound flight legs and South-bound with North-bound legs. This also means that for any flight only a limited fraction of the observing can be performed in a given region of the sky. An example of a flight plan flown during Basic Science in May 2011 is shown in Figure 3-1 below. Several more examples of flight plans flown during Basic Science can be found on the Information for Researchers Flight Plans web page.
Figure 3-1: This is a sample flight plan flown in May 2011 during Basic Science. The take-off and landing were both from Palmdale, CA. Each leg is labeled with a time stamp and observing target when appropriate. Flight legs shown in black were ''dead legs'' during which no target was observed. The orange and yellow outlines indicate airspace with varying degree of restrictions which add to the complexity of designing efficient flight plans.
For the proposer this leads to several considerations:
GIs are encouraged to review the Flight Planning presentation delivered by Dr. Randolf Klein at the SOFIA User's Workshop in November, 2011. The full list of presentations can be found on the SOFIA web site. In addition, a much more detailed discussion of target scheduling and flight planning can be found in the Observation Scheduling and Flight Planning White Paper.