Explanation:
Rising through a billowing cloud of smoke,
this
Delta II rocket
left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 17-B
Wednesday at 12:05 pm EDT.
Snug
in the payload section was GLAST, the
Gamma-ray
Large Area Space Telescope, now in orbit around planet Earth.
GLAST's
detector technology was developed for use in terrestrial
particle accelerators.
But from orbit,
GLAST can study
gamma-rays from
extreme environments in our own Milky Way galaxy, as well as
supermassive black holes at the centers of distant
active galaxies,
and the sources of powerful
gamma-ray bursts.
Those cosmic accelerators achieve energies not attainable in earthbound
laboratories.
GLAST also has the sensitivity to search
for signatures of new physics
in the relatively
unexplored high-energy gamma-ray regime.
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