GLAST

Launch data: Designation:  33053 / 08029A Launch date 11 Jun 2008 - 16:05 UT Launch site  CC, SLC-17B Launch vehicle  Delta-7920H-10L (#D333) Mission: Government: gamma-ray astronomy LEO Earth orbit on: Perigee / Apogee  542 x 562 km Eccentricity  1,44E-03 Inclination  25.59 deg Period  95.69 min

Spacecraft data: Prime contractor  Lockheed Martin (General Dynamics?) Platform  LM-900 bus Operator  Stanford University for NASA Mass at launch  4303 kg Dry Mass   kg Basic shape   Dimension (m)   Solar array   Stabilization   DC power   Design lifetime

Mission details:

• NASA's new Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope, GLAST, was launched on Jun 11 into a 542 x 561 km x 25.6 deg orbit. GLAST's main instrument is the LAT (Large Area Telescope) which is a CsI calorimeter array with a plastic scintillator detector, viewing 20 percent of the sky at a time with a spatial resolution of a few arcminutes, unprecedented in a high energy gamma ray satellite. LAT observes in the 20 MeV-300 GeV energy range, and is a successor to COS-B and CGRO-EGRET. A secondary experiment, the Gamma Burst Monitor (GBM), built by NASA Marshall and the Max Planck Institute), perates in the lower 10 keV-30 MeV range and is a successor to CGRO-BATSE .
• Will provide over 30 times more sensitivity than EGRET aboard GRO.
• The 25.6 deg inclination is unusual, requiring extra fuel during launch from the 28.5 deg North launch site at Cape Canaveral; reducing the amount of time spent in the South Atlantic Anomaly improves the sensitivity of the observations.

Astrophilately covers:

Launch cancel Cape Canaveral.