GLAST lifts off and begins orbiting Earth

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, lifted off at 12:05 p.m. EDT Wednesday and went into orbit around the Earth.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite separated from its Delta II launch rocket at 1:20 p.m. EDT and 12 minutes later both of GLAST's solar arrays were deployed about 300 miles above the Earth.

"The entire GLAST team is elated the observatory is now on-orbit and all systems continue to operate as planned," said GLAST Program Manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

NASA's newest space telescope, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will begin transmitting initial instrument data within the next month, officials said.

"After a 60-day checkout and initial calibration period, we'll begin science operations," said Steve Ritz, GLAST project scientist. "GLAST soon will be telling scientists about many new objects to study, and this information will be available on the Internet for the world to see."

The GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.