The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope reached orbit Wednesday morning aboard a rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

courtesy of NASA

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope reached orbit Wednesday, June 11th aboard a rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The blast-off was a milestone for scientists on the Stanford campus and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, who have been working on the project for the last 15 years.

“It was absolutely beautiful,” said Peter Michelson, a Stanford physicist who is a principal investigator on the gamma-ray telescope project. He and a couple dozen other members of the Stanford contingent watched from a beach as the fiery rocket rose through the Florida clouds.

The telescope will spend five to 10 years looking at the gamma rays emitted by some of the universe’s most interesting objects: black holes, blazers, neutron stars and mysterious gamma ray bursts, among others. It may provide fresh clues to the nature of dark matter and the early days of the universe.

The gamma-ray telescope —assembled at SLAC—will not turn on for another 10 days, but there’s already a bit of good news, Michelson said. The craft’s solar panels, which provide the electricity necessary for all its operations, opened up properly.