I just got word from Steve Ritz, the Project Scientist for GLAST (the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope), that it’s ready for launch! Woohoo!
GLAST will study extremely high energy light emitted by some of the most violent events in the Universe: exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, black holes gobbling down matter, and even from solar flares and maybe, just maybe, from dark matter, too (one form that DM may take will emit gamma rays when two particles of it collide).
The earliest GLAST can go is June 3. Here’s a shot from the NASA GLAST page (where you can get more info) showing GLAST being mated with the rocket that will take it into space.
This is terribly exciting. I worked on the education and public outreach for GLAST for six years — it was what funded my move out to California, back in December 2000. I wrote a vast amount of words for that project, and along with my teammates gave dozens of workshops to hundreds of teachers across the country.
I never touched the hardware; I never even saw it. But still, a piece of me will go up on that rocket in June. Pieces of lots of other people too. I’ve been able to watch twice as projects with which I’ve been involved have rocketed into space (STIS on board Hubble, and then Swift), and GLAST will make three. This will be amazing.
After the successful landing and testing of Phoenix, GLAST promises to make this a great time for robotic exploration.
Later on, nearer to launch, I’ll write more about this project; but check out the links above or my earlier posts about it to satiate yourself for now. GLAST will revolutionize gamma-ray astronomy.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:37 am
What happened in 2007 then?
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/23/glast-go-for-launch/
May 26th, 2008 at 8:48 am
At GLAST!
May 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Cool! They’re going to launch GLAST through the stargate.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Yeah, GLAST has been delayed quite a few times. That’s unfortunately typical for such a complex piece of machinery. But considering that this time it’s sitting on the top of a rocket on the launch pad, we have some slightly better reason to assume it’ll go.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
@Ari — That’s exactly what I was thinking! lol.
It’s pretty neat, BA, that you’ve been able to work on all these super cool projects. And June 3rd is just around the corner. Hopefully it’ll get to go right on schedule.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Science. delivering the goods since 1750!.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Is this the thing I heard about that might be able to measure the small perturbations in space by comparing the time difference of two different energy levels of gamma rays from the same event arriving.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Question!
I thought DM wasn’t supposed to interact through the Electromagnetic force…
Wouldn’t that rule out emissions of gamma rays as coming from DM? I only know that a trick for determining what force between particles is the lifetime of the particle (in particle physics) and also the components involved. The emmision or absorption of a photon always involves the Electromagnetic force.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I guess its just one possible theoretical form that may emit gammas.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Maybe. WIMPS perhaps?
May 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Phoenix, LHC, GLAST, etc, etc, etc. There is so much great science going on lately… and the potential for a whole load of mind-blowing discoveries just around the corner.
It’s an exciting time to be alive.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Well, I did get to see the GLAST hardware…I visited Spectrum Astro in Phoenix during January of 2007 when GLAST was being assembled. I got the grand tour, including the full bunny suit clean room experience. They were installing the star trackers the day I was there and one of the solar panels was unfurled in the clean room as well.
I have my GLAST launch invitation sitting on the table, but will be at the AAS meeting in St. Louis and can’t make the launch unless it is delayed
May 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am
But still, a piece of me will go up on that rocket in June. Pieces of lots of other people too.
This brings to mind a very funny and slightly macabre image.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
The BA says: “I never touched the hardware; I never even saw it. But still, a piece of me will go up on that rocket in June.”
I know the feeling. As I’ve mentioned here in the past, my first job out of school was flight support for a classified Air Force satellite. It launched out of Vandenberg and was controlled from the “Blue Cube” in Sunnyvale, CA. My whole job was actually a glorified keypunch operator, and I never got to see the hardware, either. Came close once.
Before one mission, though, we took a field trip down to VAFB (about 300 miles/500 Km from Sunnyvale) to see the vehicle on the pad. Wouldn’t you know, the booster was there, but the “payload” was delayed. Still, I got to take the elevator to the top of the Titan IIIB and look at the hole in the top where our vehicle would go. For a hardware freak like me that was beyond description, but the others in the office (all programmer types) just wanted to leave. They considered themselves abused having to stand around in the cold, foggy wind coming off the Pacific while this ultra-nerd kept chattering on with the captain in charge of the pad team. I was the only one to accept his invitation to take a walk out on the catwalk to look at the main engines (standing some 50 feet/15 meters in the air over the flame trench).
This, BTW, was the same pad that Clementine was launched from.
- Jack
May 27th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Sorry if the following is a duplicate. The server hung before I got the usual spam filter comment, and when re-posting, WordPress said it was a dupicate. I hope this section up front is enough to make it acceptable as “different.”
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The BA says: “I never touched the hardware; I never even saw it. But still, a piece of me will go up on that rocket in June.”
I know the feeling. As I’ve mentioned here in the past, my first job out of school was flight support for a classified Air Force satellite. It launched out of Vandenberg and was controlled from the “Blue Cube” in Sunnyvale, CA. My whole job was actually a glorified keypunch operator, and I never got to see the hardware, either. Came close once.
Before one mission, though, we took a field trip down to VAFB (about 300 miles/500 Km from Sunnyvale) to see the vehicle on the pad. Wouldn’t you know, the booster was there, but the “payload” was delayed. Still, I got to take the elevator to the top of the Titan IIIB and look at the hole in the top where our vehicle would go. For a hardware freak like me that was beyond description, but the others in the office (all programmer types) just wanted to leave. They considered themselves abused having to stand around in the cold, foggy wind coming off the Pacific while this ultra-nerd kept chattering on with the captain in charge of the pad team. I was the only one to accept his invitation to take a walk out on the catwalk to look at the main engines (standing some 50 feet/15 meters in the air over the flame trench).
This, BTW, was the same pad that Clementine was launched from.
- Jack
June 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
[...] The BA has written several posts about GLAST recently, eg here, and here. [...]