TAG | GLAST study of black holes set to launch June 3, 2008 |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Friday, 23 May 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 The GLAST mission is a joint venture of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the government agencies in Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, and Italy. The GLAST consists of two highly technical scientific instruments. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) is an imaging gamma-ray detector. It will be able to detect photons with energies from 30 million electron volts (MeV) to 300 billion electron volts (GeV). The second instrument, the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) consists of fourteen scintillation detectors, which will be able to detect bursts of photons from 8,000 keV to 30 MeV. According to the Stanford University website “GLAST: The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope,” the major scientific objectives of the GLAST mission are: (1) to understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration in active galactic nuclei (AGN), pulsars, and supernova remnants (SNR); (2) to resolve the gamma-ray sky: unidentified sources and diffuse emission. (3) To determine the high-energy behavior of gamma-ray bursts and transients; (4) to probe dark matter and early Universe; and (5) to search for evaporating primordial micro black holes [MBH] from their presumed gamma burst signatures [Hawking Radiation component]. The mission is designed to last for five years, however NASA expects the mission to last twice that long if all goes well. Many official websites are available for further information on GLAST. Besides the earlier ones mentioned, the following are also interesting sites: GLAST: NASA Solar System Exploration Marshall Space Flight Center (GLAST Burst Monitor) SYMMETRY article “glast into space” We will, no doubt, hear much about GLAST in the near future as astronomers use it to explore the universe in search of very mysterious (but very understandable—with the right equipment) high-energy objects.
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