The US space agency's latest orbiting observatory, the gamma ray large area space telescope, blasted off from Cape Canaveral today on a mission to investigate the most energetic phenomena in the universe.
Glast will scour the heavens for gamma ray radiation, which is released by exotic objects and events in the universe, from supermassive black holes to colliding neutron stars.
The telescope, which lifted off aboard a delta II rocket, will spend its first year in orbit creating a gamma ray map of space, which is expected to identify up to 10,000 new sources of the high-energy radiation waves.
The observatory will target enormously powerful cosmic explosions that produce intense bursts of gamma rays. A gamma ray burst (GRB) releases as much energy in a second as the sun will in its lifetime.
It could also unravel some of the mystery of dark matter, the mysterious - and elusive - substance that pervades space and gathers around clusters of galaxies.
The mission is a significant upgrade to Nasa's existing gamma ray telescope, Egret, which is attached to the Compton telescope.
