The Universe is home to numerous exotic and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate almost inconceivable amounts of energy. Supermassive black holes, merging neutron stars, streams of hot gas moving close to the speed of light ... these are but a few of the marvels that generate gamma-ray radiation, the most energetic form of radiation, billions of times more energetic than the type of light visible to our eyes. What is happening to produce this much energy? What happens to the surrounding environment near these phenomena? How will studying these energetic objects add to our understanding of the very nature of the Universe and how it behaves?
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly GLAST, will open this high-energy world to exploration and help us to answer these questions. With Fermi, astronomers will at long last have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists will gain valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe.
For this unique endeavor, one that brings together the astrophysics and particle physics communities, NASA is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Energy and institutions in France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden. General Dynamics was chosen to build the spacecraft. Fermi was launched June 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm EDT.
Mission Objectives
- Explore the most extreme environments in the Universe, where nature harnesses energies far beyond anything possible on Earth.
- Search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious Dark Matter.
- Explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed.
- Help crack the mysteries of the stupendously powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
- Answer long-standing questions across a broad range of topics, including solar flares, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays.
Latest News
June 18, 2010
Orbital Marks Second Anniversary of Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Mission
Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) is celebrating the second anniversary of the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spacecraft, which has performed flawlessly over the initial two years of its mission to supply scientists with important new data about the nature of the universe. In the second year of operation the spacecraft, which is based on the mid-class low-Earth orbit platform that Orbital recently acquired, established an overall system availability of 100%, providing continuous scientific data and enabling the mission team to lower costs by reducing staff needed for routine spacecraft operations.
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April 5, 2010
Fermi Initiates First Approved TOO
The first approved TOO for the Fermi mission was initiated at 19:38 UTC on April 5, 2010. The 200ks observation was approved to observe the current extraordinary outburst of the blazar 3C 454.3. We greatly encourage multiwavelength observations of this source over the next three days.
April 1, 2010
Fermi Maps an Active Galaxy's 'Smokestack Plumes'
If our eyes could see radio waves, the nearby galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) would be one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. What we can't see when looking at the galaxy in visible light is that it lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting gas plumes ejected by its supersized black hole. Each plume is nearly a million light-years long.
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