Delta II launches Fermi GLAST

6/11/08 ~ 12:05 p.m.

A Boeing Delta II-Heavy rocket, with slightly larger solid-rocket boosters than a regular Delta II, launches NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), later renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. GLAST is a successor to the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, the second of NASA's four Great Observatories which started with Hubble. Compton, launched on STS-37 in 1991, was deorbited in 2000.