The year 2008 proves to become extremely exciting as the European Laboratory for particle physics (CERN = Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) will start-up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest sub-atomic particle accelerator in an underground circular tunnel near Geneva Switzerland, in order to study nature’s fundamental elements and their interactions at the smallest scale. Meanwhile, NASA’s GLAST space telescope will study the same processes as the LHC does but in their natural cosmic settings.
Thought this mission should get its own topic
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/spacecraft/index.html
Does anyone know of another website with images of the GLAST space telescope?
The General Dynamics site on GLAST is down...
http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov/public/resources/images/
Two weeks ago, NASA's Alan Stern, associate administrator for Science at NASA Headquarters, launched a public competition, closing 31 March 2008, to re-name GLAST in a way that would "capture the excitement of GLAST’s mission and call attention to gamma-ray and high-energy astronomy...
Well I hope they will retain GLAST acronym along the new name as otherwise science writers will have to do some editing to articles in preparation
Any takers?
http://glast.sonoma.edu/glastname/
I've been trying, but it's not an easy assignment to make gamma rays and high energy particle physics popular topics round the breakfast table. Even the word gamma itself has connotations of a fail grade. It's not the sexiest greek letter. Added to that the acronym GLAST is actually one of the more catchy and pronouncable ones around. So my suggestion would be - GLAST. I haven't bothered submitting it.
They could always call it the GAmma Ray Burst Observer -- GARBO.
Then again, what do you do when a high-tech orbital observatory announces that it wants to be alone?
-the other Doug
GLASTnost?
GAMMELEON?
GaRaBu (Rhymes with Caribou)?
HULK?
GODZILLA?
GLASTnost is a good one
But people would mix it with GLONASS
GLaDOS?
It would need some sort of CAKE instrumentation.
It would serve as an excellent portal through which to view the Universe.
Or why not GLAD (Gamma-ray Large Area Detector) - there's much worser acronyms out there
I was trying to come up with words that would form the acronym KOOL-AID, but first I had to change the name of gamma rays to kappa rays... *sigh*...
-the other Doug
GONAD (Gamma-Ray Observatory 'n' Astronomical Discoverer )
GOLEM (Gamma-ray Observing Laboratory Explorer Mission)
I think it's: Gamma Ray Extended Area Telescope!
The GREAT mission.
If NASA doesn't receive any good suggestions, they could name it TWAIN (Telescope Without An Interesting Name).
FLAT : (Four Letter Acronym Telescope)
Or, slightly more seriously, the Feenberg Telescope, or the Kemble telescope.
Doug
GLAST arrived at Kennedy Space Center
The rocket that will launch GLAST is a Delta II 7920-H, manufactured and prepared for launch by United Launch Alliance. It is a heavier-lift model of the standard Delta II that uses larger solid rocket boosters. The first stage is scheduled to be erected on Pad 17-B the week of March 17. Launch is planned for 16th May 2008...
How about POSTGRAD - Powerful Orbital Space Telescope for Gamma Rays And Dark matter
Maybe that would attract bright, young scientists
Florida Today's Flame Tranch blog is reporting:
04/18/2008 03:13 PM GLAST delay expected after accident
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=5064da92e6c8480c8704375ba20ac620&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a5064da92e6c8480c8704375ba20ac620Post%3a91d8a179-ad4b-4f62-af86-204c33d4bce9&sid=sitelife.floridatoday.com
I can't open the link. Does anyone know more?
Edit: removed parentheses around link
Please don't add parentheses around long links, it makes the page too wide to read and breaks the link.
alan
Looks like a damaged adapter beam (they've apparently already organized and tested a replacement). Processing will continue on Monday, so only a short delay.
Check-out at KSC Florida:
http://www.launchphotography.com/GLAST_Astrotech.html
Ben - your check out photos are SO much better than the stuff the usual KSC PAO photographers come up with. Stunning images.
Doug
Well, thanks. :-)
The June 3 launch day will only occur if the shuttle goes May 31. If the shuttle is scrubbed 24, 48 hours then GLAST will delay accordingly with three days between them. If the shuttle were to be delayed much beyond it, GLAST would surely go first.
Launch of NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, is targeted for Tuesday, June 3, from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The launch window extends from 11:45 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. EDT and remains unchanged through Aug. 7.
NASA will hold a pre-launch news conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center news center at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 1. The briefing will be carried live on NASA Television.
A prelaunch webcast will take place on Monday, June 2 at noon on NASA Direct, Kennedy's Internet broadcasting network.
Launch is now June 5, same time.
June 6 now, earliest.
Now June 7 and counting :-P I'm not sure what the issues are exactly.
There is a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather both the 7th and 8th.
The GLAST prelaunch news conference is planned for 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 5, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center News Center. Question and answer capability will be available from participating NASA locations.
There were some issues with the Delta II launch vehicle, the launch window extends from June 7 from 11:45 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. EDT and remains unchanged through Aug. 7. Fingers crossed!
Launch postponed to June 8 now :-P
We're looking at an indefinite postponment now. The range is refusing to allow a waiver on a rocket issue, for both GLAST and Jason.
It appears that this involves a battery with respect to the flight termination system (FTS) and that the GLAST vehicle will get its battery from Jason; Jason will get a new one. I don't know what that means for the dates.
June 11 now.
If anyone is still paying attention, live coverage begins on NASA TV's media channel (only) at 9:45am EDT. There is a 40% chance of weather violation. Today they would have been no go for sure, it was stormy from around 10am through the day.
Indeed, the GLAST gamma-ray telescope, a $690 million successor to one of NASA's original Great Observatories, is scheduled for launch Wednesday 11th June 2008 from Cape Canaveral. 60% acceptable meteo conditions…
Liftoff aboard a Delta 2-Heavy rocket is targeted for 11:45 a.m. EDT.
Countdown just went in a planned 60-minute built-in hold
Launch in another 5 minutes on media channel
Lift Off
Should that not be GLAST-off ?
GLAST-off
June 11, 2008 - 12:05 p.m. EDT
GLAST has launched into space out of plumes of smoke and clouds at 12:05 p.m. EDT. The spacecraft will be going through a coast phase for about 50 minutes. GLAST will then be in the perfect orbit to monitor the universe. Let's hope everything will work out fine!
GLAST has just separated from the second stage and is now on its own. Congrats to the GLAST team!
edit : posted too soon. Still awaiting solar array deploy...
edit2 : I think we've had confirmation of solar array deploy. GLAST is truly on its way.
1720 GMT (1:20 p.m. EDT)
T+plus 75 minutes, 9 seconds. SPACECRAFT SEPARATION! NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope has been deployed from the Delta 2 rocket's second stage to complete today's launch from Cape Canaveral.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d333/status.html
Looked a bit unusual to me - blackening on the GEM's - and what looked like venting from the 1st stage shortly after launch.
Nice to hear it's up and away though
Doug
Any word when we will find out the winner of the naming contest?
Nice launch! Showed more different camera angles and zooms than your typical Delta II launch. You gotta love that zoom shot with loads of condensation sticking to the vehicle. The combination of sound, tracking footage and cloudy skies reminds me of the New Horizons launch pretty much.
Any word when we will find out the winner of the naming contest?
good question hendric... hopefully soon as I need that new name for my upcoming article on this beauty of a space telescope
Any news/hints when GLAST will be renamed ?
Is that when the warranty expires?
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/GLAST
"We're almost two weeks into the mission now, and things continue to go well, thanks to coordinated efforts across the team. Over the weekend, the spacecraft onboard attitude control software was further tested, with more challenging pointing sequences and autonomous repoints."
NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 26, at 2 p.m. EDT, to announce the first results from NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope and the observatory's new name. The telecon also will include the Large Area Telescope's first light results, and a presentation of gamma-ray bursts that the GLAST Burst Monitor has seen since it went into operation.
NASA announces new name for GLAST: Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/glast_findings_media.html
Fermi... Sounds like the last name of the lead singer of the music group, Black Eyed Peas (Fergie).
I'm assuming some of you are hip to pop culture as well
SEE BELOW FOR SOME USEFUL LINKS TO WEB RESOURCES AND THE PRESS TELECON REPLAY
Nov. 3, 2011
Trent J. Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov
RELEASE: 11-372
NASA'S FERMI FINDS YOUNGEST MILLISECOND PULSAR, 100 PULSARS TO-DATE
WASHINGTON -- An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful
millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these
objects form.
At the same time, another team has located nine new gamma-ray pulsars
in Fermi data, using improved analytical techniques.
A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy
at periodic intervals. A neutron star is the closest thing to a black
hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million
times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. This
matter is so compressed that even a teaspoonful weighs as much as
Mount Everest.
"With this new batch of pulsars, Fermi now has detected more than 100,
which is an exciting milestone when you consider that, before Fermi's
launch in 2008, only seven of them were known to emit gamma rays,"
said Pablo Saz Parkinson, an astrophysicist at the Santa Cruz
Institute for Particle Physics at the University of California Santa
Cruz, and a co-author on two papers detailing the findings.
One group of pulsars combines incredible density with extreme
rotation. The fastest of these so-called millisecond pulsars whirls
at 43,000 revolutions per minute.
Millisecond pulsars are thought to achieve such speeds because they
are gravitationally bound in binary systems with normal stars. During
part of their stellar lives, gas flows from the normal star to the
pulsar. Over time, the impact of this falling gas gradually spins up
the pulsar's rotation.
The strong magnetic fields and rapid rotation of pulsars cause them to
emit powerful beams of energy, from radio waves to gamma rays.
Because the star is transferring rotational energy to the pulsar, the
pulsar's spin eventually slows as the star loses matter.
Typically, millisecond pulsars are around a billion years old.
However, in the Nov. 3 issue of Science, the Fermi team reveals a
bright, energetic millisecond pulsar only 25 million years old.
The object, named PSR J1823−3021A, lies within NGC 6624, a spherical
collection of ancient stars called a globular cluster, one of about
160 similar objects that orbit our galaxy. The cluster is about 10
billion years old and lies about 27,000 light-years away toward the
constellation Sagittarius.
Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) showed that eleven globular
clusters emit gamma rays, the cumulative emission of dozens of
millisecond pulsars too faint for even Fermi to detect individually.
But that's not the case for NGC 6624.
"It's amazing that all of the gamma rays we see from this cluster are
coming from a single object. It must have formed recently based on
how rapidly it's emitting energy. It's a bit like finding a screaming
baby in a quiet retirement home," said Paulo Freire, the study's lead
author, at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn,
Germany.
J1823−3021A was previously identified as a pulsar by its radio
emission, yet of the nine new pulsars, none are millisecond pulsars,
and only one was later found to emit radio waves.
Despite its sensitivity, Fermi's LAT may detect only one gamma ray for
every 100,000 rotations of some of these faint pulsars. Yet new
analysis techniques applied to the precise position and arrival time
of photons collected by the LAT since 2008 were able to identify
them.
"We adapted methods originally devised for studying gravitational
waves to the problem of finding gamma-ray pulsars, and we were
quickly rewarded," said Bruce Allen, director of the Max Planck
Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany. Allen
co-authored a paper on the discoveries that was published online
today in The Astrophysical Journal.
Allen also directs the Einstein@Home project, a distributed computing
effort that uses downtime on computers of volunteers to process
astronomical data. In July, the project extended the search for
gamma-ray pulsars to the general public by including Femi LAT data in
the work processed by Einstein@Home users.
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle
physics partnership. It is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the
U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic
institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden
and the United States.
For more information, images and animations, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/fermi
FERMI press release
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/young-pulsar.html
Graphics from press briefing:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/briefing-20111103.html
A replay of the telecon is available until December 3 at these numbers:
Dial In: 800-754-7902
Toll Call: 203-369-3331
(I had to fast forward quite a bit to get to the actual briefing start)
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