On June 11th, a Delta II rocket lifted the Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) spacecraft off the launch pad toward an astounding mission to explore the most extreme environments in the universe, and search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious dark matter, explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and help crack the mysteries of the staggeringly powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts most of which will be supermassive black holes in the cores of distant galaxies.
"We're interested in listening to the stories gamma rays are telling us," said Steve Ritz, mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Gamma rays are ancient mariners, carrying tales at light speed from the farthest reaches and earliest days of our universe. They are the progeny of wild and violent events, of particles that have been accelerated to fantastic energies, and of dark matter annihilations.
Among the discoveries made by previous satellites was that the universe is dotted with powerful gamma ray bursts lasting only a few seconds and never reappearing. Searching out these bursts, which have been linked in some cases to the implosions of very massive stars into black holes, has become a current priority of space astronomy.
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