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View Full Version : 'Extreme physics' observatory prepares for flight (Forwarded)


Andrew Yee
May 18th 06, 12:02 AM
Susan Hendrix
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. May 17, 2006
(301) 286-7745

RELEASE: 06-36

'EXTREME PHYSICS' OBSERVATORY PREPARES FOR FLIGHT

Scientists and engineers have completed assembly of the primary
instrument for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, a
breakthrough orbiting observatory scheduled to launch from NASA's
Kennedy Space Center in fall 2007.

The main instrument, called the Large Area Telescope, arrived on May 14,
2006, at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington for
environmental testing.

The mission, led by NASA with the Department of Energy and international
partners, brings together the astrophysics and particle physics
communities.

"With GLAST, physicists will gain valuable information about the
evolution of the universe and physicists will search for signals that
may even force revision of some of the basic laws of physics," said the
telescope's principal investigator, Peter Michelson of Stanford
University. "The completion of the Large Area Telescope assembly and its
shipment from the accelerator center are major milestones in its
development."

The observatory will detect light billions of times more energetic than
what our eyes can see or what optical telescopes such as Hubble can
detect. Key targets include powerful particle jets emanating from
enormous black holes and possibly the theorized collisions of dark
matter particles. The Large Area Telescope will be at least 30 times
more sensitive than previous gamma-ray detectors and will have a far
greater field of view.

"The relative range of light energies that the instrument can detect is
thousands of times wider than that of an optical telescope, which
captures only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum," said
Project Scientist Steven Ritz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md. "The observatory provides a huge leap in capabilities in
this important energy band, and it opens a wide window for exploration
and discovery."

Unlike visible light, gamma rays are too energetic to be focused by
traditional telescope mirrors onto a detector. The Large Area Telescope
will employ detectors that convert incoming gamma rays into electrons
and their antimatter partners, called positrons. This technique, a
change of light into matter as described by Einstein's equation
E=mc^2, is called pair conversion. It will enable scientists to track the
direction of gamma rays and measure their energy.

The telescope will now undergo three grueling months of 'shake and bake'
testing to ensure it will survive the intense vibration and noise during
launch and operate properly in space. Electromagnetic interference tests
also will be performed to ensure Large Area Telescope operations do not
interfere with the spacecraft. When testing is finished at the Naval
Research Laboratory, the instrument will be shipped to Arizona, where
engineers at General Dynamics C4 Systems will integrate the Large Area
Telescope and a second instrument, the Burst Monitor, onto the
spacecraft.

Goddard manages the GLAST mission. The Large Area Telescope was built
with significant contributions from NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy
and foreign collaborating institutions. The Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center at Stanford University manages the instrument with collaborators
at Goddard, University of Calif., Santa Cruz, University of Washington,
Ohio State University, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and institutions
in France, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Burst Monitor with a collaborator
in Germany. General Dynamics C4 Systems is building the spacecraft and
is responsible for instrument integration. Education and Public Outreach
efforts for the mission are coordinated by Sonoma State University.

For more information about the mission, visit:
http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov/