GLAST arrives at Kennedy Space Center

The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, arrived safely at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center today, and is being prepped for launch. It’ll head into Earth orbit on a Delta-II rocket, and the launch is set for May 16th at 11:45 a.m. Eastern time.

I’m excited about this; I worked on GLAST education for six years, and I know what this machine can do. The images it provides of gamma-ray sources in the sky won’t look like Hubble pictures, but they very well may revolutionize how we understand the high-energy Universe. Black holes and gamma-ray bursts are its primary targets, but it will also detect pulsars, the Sun (solar flares can generate gamma rays) and maybe, just maybe, dark matter — there are some weird ideas that dark matter particles generate gamma rays when they annihilate each other. That’s really speculative, but GLAST will help put some numbers to the idea at the very least.

Remember, the deadline to rename GLAST is March 31! Get those names sent in.

March 4th, 2008 11:00 AM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, NASA | 4 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

4 Responses to “GLAST arrives at Kennedy Space Center”

1. chrisj Says:
March 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am

I think the coolest part about this, is that someone on my myspace’s friends page is going into space.
2. Yoshi_3up Says:
March 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am

Sweet.
3. Johnny Vector Says:
March 4th, 2008 at 7:48 pm

I think the coolest part about this, is that someone on my myspace’s friends page is going into space.

Well okay sure, but…

Someone who is going into space sat in with my band!

Is that cool points or what?
4. KaiYeves Says:
March 5th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

I’m still for either HERO or Hulk.

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com




		Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009.

Death from the Skies!

Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising