Gamma-Ray Hunter Powers Up

NASA?s GLAST space observatory has powered up and started sending signals back to Earth.

The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope launched on June 11 and entered an orbit 345 miles (555 km) above Earth. Now one of its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT), has been awakened to begin streaming data to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center?s (SLAC) operations center.

"Powering up the LAT has been even smoother than we had hoped,? said Rob Cameron, operations manager at SLAC. ?We're already receiving high-quality data that we can use to get the instrument ready for the best science return."

GLAST will use gamma-ray vision to see the most energetic light in the universe and investigate extreme environments, such as black holes and pulsars. The space telescope will also examine the origin of powerful cosmic rays and possibly answer questions about dark matter.

The GLAST instruments are slated to undergo a 60-day checkout and calibration period before officially starting the first year of its mission, when it will do a full-sky survey and quickly respond to any detected sources of gamma-ray bursts.

"We're off to a great start and we're looking forward to a new view of our universe once science operations begin," said Peter Michelson, a principal scientist for LAT at Stanford University in California.

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