Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly referred to as the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), is a space observatory being used to perform gamma-ray astronomy observations from low Earth orbit. Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), with which astronomers mostly intend to perform an all-sky survey studying astrophysical and cosmological phenomena such as active galactic nuclei, pulsars, other high-energy sources and dark matter. Another instrument aboard Fermi, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM; formerly GLAST Burst Monitor), is being used to study gamma-ray bursts.

Fermi was launched on 11 June 2008 at 16:05 GMT aboard a Delta II 7920-H rocket. The mission is a joint venture of NASA, the United States Department of Energy, and government agencies in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden.

Read more about Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope:  Overview, GLAST Renamed Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Mission, Education and Public Outreach, Rossi Prize, Discoveries

Famous quotes containing the words space and/or telescope:

    To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.
    Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958)

    The telescope at one end of his beat,
    And at the other end the microscope....
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)