GLAST detects 12 gamma-ray bursts

Huntisville, Ala -- The U.S. space agency says its new orbiting gamma-ray telescope, still in its checkout phase, has detected 12 powerful gamma-ray bursts.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, has been on orbit for slightly more than 40 days.

The gamma-ray bursts, NASA said, were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor, or GBM, which is one of two instruments on the spacecraft.

"We are thrilled to be detecting gamma-ray bursts so early in the mission. GLAST and the GBM are off to a great start!" said Charles Meegan, the GBM principal investigator at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The detectors are working well and we're really pleased with how the instrument is working."

NASA said GLAST will observe gamma rays ranging in energy from a few thousand electron volts to many hundreds of billions of electron volts or higher -- the widest range of coverage ever available on a single spacecraft for gamma ray studies.

The GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with scientists in France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.