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GLAST Gamma-Ray Satellite Powered up

By JR Minkel | Jul 3, 2008 03:54 PM

Less than a month after entering orbit, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is powered up and ready to go. Project scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California have begun receiving data from the satellite's Large Area Telescope, one of two instruments it will use to scan the sky for energetic gamma rays, the space agency reported today. Launched on June 11, GLAST is designed to study galactic powerhouses including black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts and could potentially detect dark matter as well. Researchers plan to spend the next two months calibrating the instruments to make sure they know what they're seeing as the data starts rolling in.

Tags: dark matter, NASA, space, gamma rays
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