NASA's GLAST satellite arrives at Naval Research Lab for testing(Forwarded)

Robert Naeye/Rob Gutro
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Nov. 30, 2007
301-286-4453/301-286-4044

RELEASE 07-73

NASA'S GLAST SATELLITE ARRIVES AT NAVAL RESEARCH LAB FOR TESTING

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST)
has arrived at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, for its
final round of testing.

The GLAST spacecraft has successfully completed two of its three
environmental tests at the prime contractor, General Dynamics Advanced
Information Systems in Gilbert, Ariz. These tests included exposure to
extreme vibrations and electromagnetic fields. "We've completed two of
the big three tests, and now we're going to the NRL to perform the
third," said GLAST project manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

On November 26, the spacecraft began its drive across the country in a
specially modified truck. GLAST arrived at NRL on November 28. At NRL,
the spacecraft will undergo thermal and vacuum testing to ensure that it
can survive the 90-degree F (50-degree C) temperature swings it will
experience in Earth orbit.

"Although gamma rays can travel billions of light-years across the
universe, they can't penetrate Earth's atmosphere, so we must launch our
instruments into space. We need to ensure the observatory can function
in the space environment, and that is the main goal of the testing about
to take place," says GLAST project scientist Steve Ritz of NASA Goddard.

After GLAST finishes the thermal-vac testing, it will be trucked or
flown to Cape Canaveral, Fla. There, the solar arrays and flight battery
will be added to the spacecraft, and it will be fueled with propellant.
The launch, aboard a Delta II Heavy rocket, is scheduled for no earlier
than May 29, 2008.

GLAST will carry two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the
GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), to study the extreme universe, where nature
harnesses energies far beyond anything scientists can achieve in their
most elaborate experiments on Earth. GLAST may answer the mystery of
how black holes accelerate jets of particles to near-light speed, and it
may
fill in gaps in our knowledge of stupendously powerful explosions known
as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

The LAT, which works like a particle detector rather than a conventional
telescope, greatly improves upon all previous gamma-ray instruments. It
is more than 30 times as sensitive to faint sources, it covers a much
broader range of gamma-ray wavelengths, it can locate sources much more
precisely, and it can measure the arrival time of each gamma ray more
accurately.

"With the LAT we will be able to pinpoint locations in the universe
where matter is accelerated to extremely high-energies, shedding new
light on the origin of cosmic rays," says LAT principal investigator
Peter Michelson of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We will
also observe neutron stars and learn how they produce their
lighthouse-like particle beams. The LAT will help astronomers determine
the nature of hundreds of gamma-ray sources seen by previous missions,
but whose nature remains shrouded in mystery. Most exciting of all, the
LAT will find thousands of previously unknown gamma-ray sources."

"We expect that the GBM will detect about 200 GRBs per year," said GBM
principal investigator Charles "Chip" Meegan of NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "With the LAT and GBM working
together, and with other satellites, we hope to understand how the gamma
rays are actually produced in GRBs, and whether GRBs create high-energy
gamma rays that were beyond the range of previous satellites."

From its perch in low-Earth orbit, GLAST will also test key concepts in
fundamental physics, such as whether all forms of light -- regardless of
wavelength -- travel at the same speed. It might help physicists
determine the nature of dark matter by catching the gamma-ray signature
of dark-matter particles annihilating one another. It might even detect
gamma rays from exploding black holes.

NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics
partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of
Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions
and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

For more information about the GLAST mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/GLAST

[NOTE: Images supporting this release are available at
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...ast_tests.html ]