NASA to Announce New Name for GLAST, First Light Findings

NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, August 26, at 2 p.m. EDT, to announce the first results from NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope and the observatory’s new name. The telecon also will include the Large Area Telescope’s first light results, and a presentation of gamma-ray bursts that the GLAST Burst Monitor has seen since it went into operation.

Briefing participants:

— Jon Morse, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington

— Dennis Kovar, associate director of science for high energy physics, U.S. Department of Energy, Germantown, Md.

— Steve Ritz, GLAST project scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

— Peter Michelson, Large Area Telescope principal investigator, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

— Chip Meegan, GLAST Burst Monitor principal investigator, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters should e-mail a request to J.D. Harrington by 1 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 26. They must include their media affiliation and telephone number. Supporting information for the briefing will be posted at 1 p.m., Aug. 26, at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/glast_findings_media.html

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on the Web at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

For more information about the GLAST mission on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/glast