The GLAST spacecraft and Delta II
June 11, 2008 - At approximately 12:15 p.m., the Delta II rocket easily lifted the GLAST spacecraft off the NASA launchpad. It headed through the beautiful blue skies of Florida for space as the crowd cheered SO turn up your volume. GLAST is now on its own with its solar arrays deployed and placed into a circular orbit 350 miles above the Earth, prepared to monitor the universe and the mysterious gamma-ray bursts to try and explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to almost light speed. It will also to help explain the mysteries of the powerful explosions known as gamma-ray burst
On that day, I headed straight north on A1A from my doctor's appointment at Cocoa Beach, 10 minutes to my favorite Cape Canaveral beach, Cherie Down, where if the rocket is on the right pad you can watch it launch from the base up as it did here. It was beautiful and very fast and if you listen you can hear the roar as the rocket rises through the clouds.
