Daily Science Dose

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The space shuttle Discovery finally launched Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral, after several delays due to a hydrogen leak and worries over the hydrogen valves. The shuttle’s mission is to get to the International Space Station to install the last solar panel arrays on the ISS to make it fully operational, as well as switching out an ISS “resident”. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will be moving in, and U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus will be returning home on Discovery’s return flight.

Despite the troubles that plagued its liftoff, Discovery will only shorten its mission by one day and a space walk. Luckily, the ISS crew can accomplish the space walk’s goals on their own, once the shuttle leaves for Earth. NASA says that all other mission directives will go forward as planned. The major part of that mission is the transport and installation of the final and 11th truss segment, which are the solar wings that provide power to the station. These final “wings” will support a full-time crew of six at the ISS.

But just when science starts to get boring, yet another chunk of space debris, a piece of an old Soviet satellite threatens the International Space Station, the second time in the last week. NASA feels that the ISS is safe, as of this writing, but is monitoring the “erratic” movements of the 4-inch item that has been floating around since the satellite’s mysterious break-up in 1981.

The problem is that the Shuttle is not at the ISS yet, and won’t be docking at the Space Station until Tuesday. The space junk will arrive first, and if the ISS does have to power up some engines to move out of the way, the shuttle will also have to adjust its course. I guess that’s not much of a problem.

Anyway, space debris seems to be becoming a bit of a nuisance for space missions. In high school, I was on the debate team the year that the resolution was to increase space exploration, and I remember all the evidence I had about space debris becoming a problem in the near future. That was like 20 years ago now, and it looks like the alarmists were right.

Space may seem infinite, but our number of safe orbits is not.

space shuttle, NASA, Discovery, International Space Station, ISS, space debris, space junk, orbit, missions, astronaut

That’s kind of a strange thought, huh, a lifeboat in space. I wonder how long that lifeboat would sustain a person or persons, considering how long it could take to ready shuttles for rescue missions.

The three astronauts(kosmonauts) aboard the International Space Station got a nasty phone call today. It was NASA calling, and a chunk of space junk was headed right for the ISS. No time to fire an engine to nudge the vessel out of the way of impact and besides another piece of debris was in the way, the crew instead climbed into the Soyuz lifeboat. Luckily, the five-inch wide piece of space litter whizzed by the Space Station, and eleven minutes after entering the lifeboat, the astronauts returned to the station.

A spokeman for NASA told the New York Times that the threat of collision posed by the piece of space debris was not huge, but having the crew go into the lifeboat was an “abundance of caution.”

This is the fifth time since becoming operational in 1998 that space debris has threatened the International Space Station so much that the lifeboat maneuver was an option.

By the way, I was being rather glib about the Soyuz lifeboat earlier. The Soyuz is not technically a lifeboat per se, but it is the ship that takes the crews to the ISS as well as returning them to Earth. Here is a picture of the Soyuz docked at the International Space Station.

As the name would imply, the Soyuz is the Russian equivalent to the US space shuttle, in that it is used in the transport of people and equipment to the Space Station. The Soyuz program started back in the 60’s for the then Soviet’s moon mission.

International Space Station, NASA, space debris, space junk, satellite, orbit, Soyuz, lifeboat, space shuttle, US, Russian, Soviet

It’s funny. I was watching Science Channel HD last night, and after a Killer Asteroids show, a show came on about Planet Hunters. And then this morning, I find out that the Kepler Telescope is being launched today. Weird. It’s like the Universe is trying to tell me something…like write about planet hunting.

After years and years of using Earth-based telescopes to find planetary cousins, NASA is moving the base of operations (well, the “eye” of operations) to an Earth orbit in order to get past the cloudy, hazier Earth atmosphere. One of the obstacles that planet-hunting scientists have is that atmosphere, and much like the Hubble Telescope, imaging of distant objects gets waaay better off-planet.

The Kepler Telescope has been designed with planet hunting in mind, and in particular Earth-alikes. Named for the guy who formulated the laws of planetary motion, Johannes Kepler. The key to finding a planet is patience, obviously, but also a keen eye. As planets are not stars, seeing them is a bit tricky. Astronomers have to look for “wobbles” in a star’s light, as seen from our perspective. The wobble or slight dip in the star’s brightness signifies that something is moving (or has, as looking at lights in space is like looking back in time) across the star’s face. Earth would be just a wobble across our Sun to those living across the Milky Way.

So, NASA is sending up the Kepler to look for wobbles…for three and a half years. In fact, a true wobble won’t be detected for those three years. The Kepler will be looking at a specific patch of sky up to 3,000 light years away in the vicinity of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Kepler will stare at the region for at least 3 1/2 years, measuring the light from 100,000 stars every half hour with a 95 million-pixel camera to watch for the slight dip in a star’s brightness that signals a planet moving across it as seen from Earth. It’s the equivalent of trying to spot a flea crawl across a car headlight from miles away, NASA has said. –Space.com

Once a wobble is found, and found again the next two years, to find another Earth-like planet, the planet has to be within a certain distance from whatever star it calls its Sun. Too close, like that little planet found last month by the European’s COROT space telescope, and the planet may be way too hot. Too far, and it could be too cold. Usually, the presence of water is the benchmark for Earth-iness. Of course, the size of the exosolar “sun” also matters, as a larger sun will provide more heat to planets farther away, and vice versa.

Kepler launches tonight (March 6) at 10:49 EST with a back-up window again at 11:13pm EST. If you are along the East Coast, try to get out and find the newest addition to the firmament as it heads towards orbit.

Kepler, Earth, NASA, telescope, space, Hubble telescope, space exploration, Cygnus, Lyra, planet hunting, planets, Milky Way, Sun, COROT, stars, universe, Science Channel

Word is that Saturn has a new moon. This small, small, small moon might actually be called a moonlet, but the research is still out on that as the cameras on the Cassini probe are not able to get a clear picture of this new moon in Saturn’s faint, icy G-Ring.

From NASA’s explanation:

This sequence of three images, obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft over the course of about 10 minutes, shows the path of a newly found moonlet in a bright arc of Saturn’s faint G ring.

In each image, a small streak of light within the ring is visible. Unlike the streaks in the background, which are distant stars smeared by the camera’s long exposure time of 46 seconds, this streak is aligned with the G ring and moves along the ring as expected for an object embedded in the ring.

Cassini scientists interpret the moving streak to be reflected light from a tiny moon half a kilometer (a third of mile) wide that is likely a major source of material in the arc and the rest of the G ring. Debris knocked off this moon forms a relatively bright arc of material near the inner edge of the G ring, the most visible part of the ring in these images. That arc, in turn, leaks material to form the entire ring. –NASA

So what’s the diff between a moon and a moonlet? Moonlets are way smaller, sure; but as that is not an exact measurement, but you can think of moonlets as asteroid-sized for the most part (as small as 100 m). Moonlets are too small to have gravitational pull in so far as to collect surrounding debris in large enough quantities as to clear the surrounding space in their orbits, like a larger Saturn moon would. Because a moonlet does not create a clear view of itself, due to the other stuff around it, they are harder to see. In fact, so hard to see that moonlets of Saturn have only just recently been discovered.

These are the so-called “propeller moons” that were found in 2004 within Saturn’s A-Ring.

Before this new moonlet was noticed, the G-Ring was a mystery to scientists, as the other rings of Saturn were associated with a moon or moons. But now that a moonlet body has been found, scientists are hoping that this new moonlet can give them clues as to how rings form. Theory thus far has it that a larger moon broke up and shattered, forming the glorious rings of Saturn. The newer moonlets discovered as of late may provide clues as to their origin, but also may give scientists insight into how new moons aggregate out of smaller material and grow larger to develop a gravitational pull.

Just in case you were wondering, the rings get their letters from their sequence of discovery. Starting closest to Saturn, it goes D, C, B, A, F, G and E.

Images from NASA/JPL

Saturn, Cassani, JPL, NASA, moon, moonlet, G-ring, rings, gravity, orbit

As Martin Prince says at the conclusion of his class president pre-election speech, Keep watching the skies…

And tonight you will be rewarded. We will again get a lovely sight in the Western sky when a 10% crescent moon will be very close to a 20% crescent Venus, which is the second brightest object in the night sky. If you remember back in November, a crescent Moon aligned with not only Venus, but also Jupiter. It was pretty, indeed, but now, Venus is brighter.

But wait, Venus is going to be in its crescent form, right? Why would that be brighter than say a full Venus? And the answer to that, my friends, is that Venus is actually closer to the Earth when in its orbit at the point that it appears as a crescent to Earthlings.

Did you also know that you can see Venus during the daytime right now? It’s that bright. If you have a clear day (unlike me today in Portland, Oregon), get outside and try to find a shady spot from the sun’s direct rays into your eyes. Find the slight light of the thin sliver of the Moon, which will be directly east from the Sun. Scout a few “thumbs” away from the Moon, and you will find Venus. By the time the sun sets, Venus will be on the right side of the Moon from our perspective in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, when the show is at its best, the Moon will look like a coy, tight-lipped smile with a Venus beauty mark off to the right. 2 degrees right, to be exact.

Viewing will be best from sundown for about three hours before both the Moon and Venus set. And yes, a telescope is handy, but this show is for all to see. If you are lucky, you may also see a Russian Kosmos satellite move through the Moon-Venus alignment.

night sky, Moon, Venus, crescent, skywatching, Martin Prince, western hemisphere, Jupiter, align, Sun, Earth, astronomy

Last week, a US satellite collided with a Russian satellite. And this accident could be just the beginning.

Since the launch of Sputnik, Americans and the former Soviet Union raced each other to send more and more satellites into space. And most of that hardware is still up there. It’s called space debris, and in the fifty years that man has been exploring the vacuum that envelopes the planet, there have been more than 6,000 satellites launched into orbit, half of which are not longer functioning. And now, as more and more nations are joining the Americans, Russians, and the Europeans in placing more potential debris into the low-orbits, the problem of space debris may get a whole lot worse.

There is an estimated 14,000 objects that are larger than 4 inches or 10 centimeters. The US and Russia actively track about 17,000 objects that are floating around in space for fear that these objects may collide or even penetrate something like the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope and its cousins, or the ever-smaller US Space Shuttle fleet.

Worse yet, some of that junk up there is radioactive.

Currently, 44 radiation sources from Russia are parked in the burial orbit. They are: two satellites with unseparated nuclear power units (Cosmos-1818 and Cosmos-1867), fuel assemblies and 12 closed-down reactors with a liquid metal coolant, 15 nuclear-fuel assemblies, and 15 fuel-free units with a coolant in the secondary cooling loop. They are to spend no less than 300 to 400 passive years in the orbit. That is enough for uranium-235 fission products to decay to safe levels.

The United States is another contributor to the high levels of radiation in near-Earth space. In April 1964, its Transit-SB navigation satellite with a radio isotope generator aboard failed to enter orbit and broke into pieces. While burning up in the atmosphere, it scattered about a kilogram of plutonium-238 over the western part of the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world. A few years later, the Nimbus-B weather satellite with a uranium-235 reactor crashed into the Indian Ocean. Today, there are seven American radiation sources circling the Earth in orbits ranging from 800 kilometers to 1,100 kilometers, and two more in near-geostationary ones. –Ria Novosti

After the US-Russian collision, Russia is being warned by scientists that wreckage could land in Siberia. The Kosmos line of military satellites have been known to carry nuclear reactors on board. So far, the Russians are not confirming if the satellite involved in the collision is indeed radioactive, but they seem to be taking the warnings seriously, especially as Lake Baikal is in the area that wreckage may affect.

satellite, US, Russia, collision, space debris, Sputnik, Siberia, military, radioactive, wreakage, Lake Baikal

Maybe. NASA thinks that it may have a star on its hands that could possibly be flaring due to quakes on the surface of the star. The quakes occur, not because of vulcanism like here on Earth, but because this particular star has super-powered magnetic fields that are so intense they rip apart the surface of the star when they move.

Neat.

Let’s start at the very beginning. BANG. Ha, ha, get it?

There is this star, see, and it’s 30,000 light years away from Earth. The star is named SGR J1550-5418, which isn’t very romantic, and it’s located in the constellation, Norma, which is even less romantic. This SGR J1550-5418 is a neutron star.

A neutron star is what’s left over after a supernova event. After a star collapses onto itself, the stuff left over are neutrons, the same sub-atomic particles that comprise an atom’s neucleus. You can think of a neutron star as a really big atomic neucleus that is super dense. This neutron star is about one and half times the mass of our Sun, but all that is compacted into a sphere with a diameter of only about 12 miles.

Well, this SGR J1550-5418 is a special kind of neutron star. It’s a “soft-gamma-ray repeater.” There have only been six of these soft-gamma repeaters found so far. What happens is that the star occasionally flares out, that’s right, gamma rays. Luckily for NASA scientists, just this last summer a new telescope, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space telescope, was launched to study these very same gamma rays.

Theory has it that soft-gamma-ray repeaters that are known as “magnetars” flare due to “quakes” in the surface crust of the star. The magnetar have such powerful magnetic fields that they effectively rip open the surface and allow gamma-rays to erupt forth into space. Hopefully, with the Fermi on the case, scientists will be able to test the theory about starquakes. The Fermi will be able to see through the bursts and find the structures within.

neutron star, astronomy, NASA, space, telescope, Fermi, gamma-ray, magnetar, soft-gamma-ray repeater, sun, earth, starquakes, magnetic fields

Methane was in the news this week, after it was finally confirmed that methane plumes are present on Mars and in another study, decaying plants were found not to contribute methane to the air, but instead transpire methane from other sources, such as microbes in the soil.

Methane plumes are red and yellow in this NASA-produced image.

Mars’ Methane Madness

NASA announced this past week that scientists have confirmed the presence of infamous greenhouse gas methane on the lonely redrock planetary neighbor. Plumes of methane have been detected at three different locations on Mars, and the plumes only occur during the summer. My question now is what exactly is a Martian summer? Does Mars enjoy a tilt like Earth, or is it when the planet is closest the sun in its elliptical orbit?

The answer is that Mars has an axial tilt of about 25 degrees, similar to Earth’s 23ish degrees.

So methane is there, but what is it that produces this gas? On Earth, methane is produced by certain microbes that live, well, everywhere…even in your stomach. Methane is the major component of our own natural gas.

So does this mean that there is life on Mars? Maybe. Maybe not. Methane is also a product of volcanic activity. Volcanoes release the gas into the atmosphere, and that gas may have been trapped underground for quite some time. On Earth, methane is trapped under heavier ocean water as well as the permafrost in the arctic and antarctic regions of the Earth. So it may mean that there could have been microbial life on Mars some time ago, or it could mean that Mars also has a goodly amount of methane trapped under its volcanically active surface.

Methane Doesn’t Come from Decaying Plants…Kind of.

Ok, methane may come from plant matter, but it’s not the plant’s fault. A few years ago, Frank Keppler ran a test to see if plant matter produces methane. His experiment concluded yes, but it made other scientists question the experiment. So some other scientists ran another experiment.

“This finding was shocking,” recalls Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London, in Egham, U.K. If true, both plant biochemistry and global methane budget would need a major reexamination. It could also mean that the human contribution to global warming is less than previously thought.

Nisbet’s team set about to investigate Keppler’s findings by growing the same plants, including celery (Apium graveolens) and a type of rice (Oryza sativa), in the absence of external sources of the greenhouse gas. The group found no trace of methane, suggesting that the plants alone cannot make the gas. In a separate experiment, the team placed the plants in water containing dissolved methane. Sure enough, the roots drew up the methane-soaked water and the leaves then pushed out the gas and water vapor–a process known as transpiration. –Science

The same group of scientists also tested some chemical paths that could allow the plant to create methane, but nada, the plant’s did not have the same pathways that methane-producing microbes have. Keppler gives the new science a nod to the transpiration of methane finding, but still holds on to the idea that an unidentified pathway exists.

methane, Mars, plants, NASA, science, greenhouse gas, atmosphere, emissions, decomposition, microbes, chemical, transpiration,

This is the first visible light image of a planet outside of our solar system.

It’s the tiny little red dot in the little square right above the inset box in which you can see hazy, non-distinct Fomalhaut b in a composite image that shows its (actually, before now, it was just a disk, as far as astronomists could tell before the latest image) position change in 2004 and 2006. The Hubble Space Telescope (back on line at last) caught this image, proving that what astronomers felt could be a planet was indeed a planet. They have estimated that the planet, Fomalhaut b, named so for the star it orbits, Fomalhaut, is three times the size of Jupiter.

Sorry to be geeky when it comes to Space and astronomy, but this is a big moment. Planets outside of our small little, teeny solar system have only just been discovered, the first being in 1995. And to get a picture, a normal, visible light picture of a extrasolar planet is like xmas and your birthday rolled into one.

Back in the 1980’s, astronomers felt that the star, Fomalhaut, was a likely candidate for supporting a planetary system. It was because Fomalhaut had signs of excess dust around it. Where there is dust, there is planets, if the dust is given long enough to collect into large enough masses to be called planets. Dust is usually a tip off to astronomers that something more interesting might be lurking around. And something interesting indeed…

Due to getting two positions of this body, astronomers at NASA have determined that Fomalhaut b revolves around Fomalhaut every 872 years.

Fomalhaut, Fomalhaut b, NASA, Hubble, Space, Telescope, astronomers, science, astronomy

If you haven’t noticed, I love astronomy. And I especially enjoy NASA’s news service.

Funny little story about me. Once, at summer camp for nerds, lying in the grass outside on a college campus, under the stars, I looked up and saw a meteor shower. I was so geeked about it and immediately announced the astronomical delight to the ten or so other teens around me. Everyone looked up in anticipation, and then one guy said, “It’s fireflies.”

Sigh. I didn’t have my glasses on.

Anyhoo, it seems the September Perseids were really fantastic this year.

During the dark hours before dawn on Sept. 9, 2008, a surprising flurry of meteors had showered the skies above Huntsville, Alabama. More than two dozen of them were fireballs brighter than Jupiter or Venus; a few even cast shadows.

Even the tiny Cloudbait Observatory in Colorado saw a good show that morning.

Naturally, this is a composite image of a few hours.

Background on the September Perseids

Named for the originating constellation, Perseus, the September Perseids are not as well-known as the August Perseids, due to the small number and magnitude of the meteors. But every now and then, it seems that the Earth meets up with the dust trail from whatever comet the September Perseids come. When this happens, we see the September Perseids. You can see “falling stars” all the time, of course, but at certain times of the year, the Earth’s revolution comes into contact with a relatively constant stream of comet debris.

NASA has put together a network of systems for finding the origins of meteors at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and at the Walker County Science Center in North Georgia. The network consists of two Sentinel systems. NASA astronomer and meteor expert Bill Cooke explains the Sentinel as “a computer-controlled camera, fisheye lens and digital video recorder. It was developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario for studies of meteors over Canada, and now we’ve adapted it for our purposes. Every night Sentinel patrols the sky, looking for the unexpected, and it never gets sleepy.”

Why two never-sleepy cameras looking for meteors? Two sources can upload info to a computer and create a 3-D version of the meteoroid and then can triangulate the source of that meteoroid. The first test of the two-camera network on October 1, 2008 figured out that a centimeter-size meteoroid came from the Asteroid Belt. Neat.

Next year, the Sentinels should be able to determine the origin of the September Perseids, but the real reason behind the science of finding the source of meteors is the many things that meteoroids can impact. Not so much on the Earth’s surface, as most meteoroids burn up upon entry into the atmosphere, but more importantly for satellites, spacecraft, and anything on the Moon, which doesn’t have the protection of a dense atmosphere.

Still, even without the science, meteor showers (or a bunch of high-flying fireflies to a near-sighted person) sure are pretty to look at.

Keep watching the skies.

NASA, astronomy, space, comets, meteors, meteor showers, falling stars, Perseus, constellations, September, Perseids, August, Sentinel, Alabama, Georgia, Marshall Space Flight Center, Walker County Science Center, atmosphere, Earth, Moon

News from NASA this week brings up an interesting issue in solar science and a possible problem for those of us feeling the heat on Earth. It seems that the current solar minimum may be coming to an end, and the next Solar Cycle is just beginning, on its way to a solar maximum. Minimal sun spot activity has been correlated to cooler temperatures on Earth, which presently would be a nice relief from the increased temperatures we have been seeing as of late, but unfortunately, even during the last minimum, we saw very little relief in terms of degrees, which doesn’t bode that well for the now just-beginning solar maximum.

Nov. 7, 2008: After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.

“I think solar minimum is behind us,” says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. “Last month we counted five sunspot groups,” he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. “This represents a real increase in solar activity.”

A close-up of one of the October 2008 sun spots, taken by Alan Friedman.

Ok, so minimums and maximums aside, what do sun spots have to do with the Earth and its neighbors?

Sun spots appear when the Sun’s magnetic field becomes tangled on itself, during the Sun’s rather turbulent rotation of the gaseous surface, and when the magnetic field becomes tangled, it can poke through the surface gases, exposing the darker core of the Sun. The Sun’s equatorial region “rotates” faster than the poles, so sun spots usually appear around the Sun’s equator, as this is the region which exhibits the most turbulent activity of the magnetic fields. Oh, and if that weren’t chaotic enough, the poles then reverse themselves, corresponding it seems to the solar maximums.

The Sun spots produce extra ultraviolet light as well as x-ray radiation, which finds its way to Earth. The extra UV and X-ray radiation causes the Earth to heat up, and the heat causes the atmosphere to expand. Hmm, I wonder if the atmosphere expands, if that won’t allow more room for all that extra carbon we keep pumping into it? Doesn’t matter, as the UV and X-rays also creates more ozone in the upper atmosphere, which we all know traps more heat in the atmosphere.

An image of the Sun’s x-ray radiation.

Sooo, if there are more sun spots, does that mean that the Sun will be hotter? Sun spots cool the Sun’s surface, but really have no net effect on the gazillion degrees that the Sun is. But increased numbers of sun spots may heat up the Earth. Not so good news, eh? The last maximum was around 2000, and that year is among the hottest on record, and guess what, even with the minimum lately, the years are still getting hotter, so who knows how hot things will get when the Sun starts spotting up?

The Japanese have a probe orbiting the Earth right now that is focused on the Sun (the image at left was taken by the Hinode probe). The probe is studying sun flares, related to sun spots. NASA also has the Stereo mission that is studying coronal mass ejections and creating 3D images of the Sun. Not that these missions will shed light on how hot the Earth can get from sun spots, but it is a good start in studying the most important body in our Solar System.

On the opposite side of that coin, the period between 1645 and 1715, known as the Little Ice Age, was an extended period of low sun spot activity. Maybe if we can figure out how to discourage sun spots, we can in effect cool our planet? Just an idea.

NASA, sun spots, sun, solar minimum, solar maximum, global warming, increased temperatures, UV, X-ray, radiation, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, Japan, Hinode, Stereo mission, magnetic fields, Little Ice Age

Two months ago, NASA launched what was then known as the GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope), and today, the space agency announced both the new name as well as the successful passing of initial testing for the new telescope. The GLAST is now named for physics pioneer, Enrico Fermi.

From the GLAST mission website:

GLAST is a powerful space observatory that will open a wide window on the universe. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, and the gamma-ray sky is spectacularly different from the one we perceive with our own eyes. With a huge leap in all key capabilities, GLAST data will enable scientists to answer persistent questions across a broad range of topics, including supermassive black-hole systems, pulsars, the origin of cosmic rays, and searches for signals of new physics.

Here is one of the first images being produced by the FGST. This is the result of 95 hours of imaging.

Neat.

The Fermi takes over for the now-defunct Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, which was in operation from 1991 to June 2000. The Fermi has two major components, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM). The Fermi will scan the entire sky each day in about three hours. This “survey mode” will be the primary function of the FGST, but as the telescope is sensitive to some really high levels of gamma-rays, it should be interesting as to what new discoveries will come out of this mission. The telescope will be observing photons that are in the 20 Million electron Volts (MeV) to those over 300 Billion electron Volts (GeV). The high end of that range is still relatively unexplored.

The LAT covers the higher energies, but the GBM looks for those lower ranges, which means that when the two instruments work together, scientists will get a more complete picture of the mysteries of gamma-ray bursts around the Universe, you know, the bursts that signify the death of a star or when two neutron stars unite into one. Or at least that is what scientists think cause gamma-ray bursts, so the Fermi will be able to shed some light on what indeed causes these violent explosions so far away.

NASA, gamma-ray telescope, GLAST, Large Area Telescope, gamma-ray bursts, Enrico Fermi, Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, stars, astronomy