NASA's new GLAST space telescope is up and running in orbit,
and going by a brand new name.
On Tuesday, NASA rechristened the Gamma-ray observatory the Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope after Italian scientist Enrico Fermi, a pioneer in
high-energy physics.
"Enrico Fermi was the first person to suggest how
cosmic particles could be accelerated to high speeds," said Paul Hertz,
chief scientist for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in
Washington, D.C. "His theory provides the foundation for understanding the
powerful phenomena his namesake telescope will discover."
Formerly known as the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, the
Fermi observatory produced its first all-sky map in gamma rays within the
first few days of operations, revealing the glowing gas of our Milky Way galaxy,
blinking spinning stars called pulsars and a flaring galaxy billions of
light-years away.
"We did this map in a very brief period of time, just
in a matter of days," said Fermi project scientist Steve Ritz of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., during a Tuesday teleconference.
"The previous experiment, EGRET [NASA's Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment
Telescope], took more than a year to make an equivalent map. That holds a
tremendous amount of promise for things to come."
The $690
million Fermi telescope launched
June 11 from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to begin a planned
five-year mission to scan the skies for high-energy gamma-ray
light. This radiation, far beyond the range visible to the human eye, reveals
some of the most energetic and mysterious events in the universe, including
dark matter, black holes and spinning pulsars.
Since its launch the Fermi observatory has seen smooth
sailing with no major issues during its check-out phase, mission managers said.
"Everything worked as expected and then some," Ritz
said. "None of us could have actually have asked for such a smooth turn
on. It went like clockwork where we were actually ahead of the clock."
Fermi recently completed its 60-day checkout and calibration
period, and has officially begun its mission to continuously survey the sky and
investigate any detected sources of gamma-ray bursts. These few-seconds-long
fireworks are the most luminous flashes seen in the universe since the big
bang. Scientists aren't sure what causes the displays, but suspect they occur
when a black hole swallows up a massive star.
So far the observatory hasn't been able to study any of
these bursts in detail yet with its Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument.
"There's been a little bit of bad luck, the bursts
haven't been cooperating with us," said Charles "Chip" Meegan, Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope burst monitor principal investigator, of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "There's no doubt were
gonna get some good ones, it's just a matter of waiting."
The Fermi observatory mission is a collaborative effort between
NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and academic institutions and partners in
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
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