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A space telescope built to observe the most violent events in the universe has been given the all-clear to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida today. Nasa's Glast mission will scour the universe for gamma rays, which are released by supermassive black holes, merging neutron stars and streams of hot gas that hurtle through space at tremendous speeds. The $690m space observatory will take pictures of the gamma ray universe, shedding light on mysteries such as the source of cosmic rays and how black holes can accelerate immense jets of material to nearly the speed of light. The US space agency has set a launch window for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast) between 16.45 and 18.40 BST (11.45am and 1.40pm EDT), but said there was a 40% chance that bad weather would delay the mission. Source : Guardian UK
"Glast enables scientists to look under the hood and see how the universe works," said project scientist, Steve Ritz. Gamma rays are the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation in the universe, billions of times more energetic that the visible light we can see. Astronomers will use the orbiting observatory to investigate intense gamma ray bursts, which in one second release as much energy as the sun over its five billion year life. The Glast mission will also study the elusive dark matter that is thought to account for the vast majority of mass in the universe. |
