Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope

Short Description:

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a high-energy Gamma-ray mission to identify and study Nature's highest energy particle accelerators.

The LAT (Large Area Telescope) onboard Fermi operates in the energy range from 30 MeV to 300 GeV and has a factor of more than 30 improvement in sensitivity over the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET), its predecessor onboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO).


In addition to the LAT, a Gamma-ray burst monitor (GBM) is part of the satellite covering the energy range 10 keV to 30 MeV.

Project Type:

Instrument for satellite; software for scientific data reduction.

MPE Contribution:

Software is provided for LAT and data analysis is done in teams.

The GBM was built and tested in close collaboration between the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UNH) and the MPE. The operation of the detector system and the analysis of the data is done in a close collaboration of UNH and MPE.

Status:

launch of satellite:   June 11, 2008

actual status:          active in Earth orbit

end of mission:        t.b.d.

Links:

NASA Fermi pages

Fermi GBM pages at MPE

High-Energy Astrophysics (web pages of the MPE department involved in the project)

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