NASA launches telescope to scout out gamma rays

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA launched a telescope Wednesday to scout out elusive, super high-energy gamma rays lurking in the universe.

Glast — a NASA acronym standing for Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope — began its five- to 10-year Earth-orbiting mission with a midday blastoff aboard a Delta rocket.

The $690 million telescope, supported by six countries, will pick up where NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory left off before its deliberate destruction in 2000, but in a bigger and better way.

With superior new technology and insight gained from Compton and other telescopes, Glast will be able to do in three hours, or two orbits of Earth — survey the entire sky — what Compton took 15 months to do. What’s more, Glast and its particle detectors are much more sensitive and precise, and should provide an unprecedented view into the high-energy universe from a 345-mile-high orbit.

“In a sense what Glast is doing is giving us a chance to peek behind the curtain or look under the hood for how things are working, and it’s only by doing this sort of exploration that we’re able to learn these things. It’s a form of scientific enlightenment,” said NASA project scientist Steven Ritz.

Gamma rays — at the extreme end of high energy — go “splat” when they encounter Earth’s upper atmosphere, so scientists must look to space observatories to uncover the secrets of gamma radiation.