Jun

12

Rocket blasts off to deliver telescope into orbit

Filed Under Science | Posted By Jennifer Sullivan |

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In Florida, an unmanned Delta rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to place a gamma ray telescope into orbit to examine the most energetic form of light.

Gamma rays are billions of times more powerful that what can be seen with the naked eye. This radiation is developed by the most violent phenomena in the universe, such as the gravitational clamps of black holes and the magnetic fields of star cores so thick that a tablespoon would weight a billion tons.

The $690 million Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope known as GLAST is expected to investigate these objects. The director of NASA`s astrophysics division, Mr. John Morse says, ” If you ever you hit the boundaries and do something an order of magnitude better than you’ve done before, you always wind up with inventions.”

GLAST has a broad field of view and it was discharged into orbit around Earth aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta rocket, which blasted off at 12:05 p.m. EDT. The telescope was formulated to last five years, but scientists are hoping that it will last for 10 years or so.



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