Feb 19 2009
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had signed a contract with American Tank and Vessel of Mobile, Alabama, for the installation of a test-cell diffuser and associated systems in the A-3 test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center (SSC) in Mississippi. NASA planned to test the J-2X engine for its Constellation Program at the A-3 test stand. Construction had begun in 2007, and NASA had scheduled the first test to take place in 2012. The contract with American Tank and Vessel had a maximum value of US$45 million.
NASA, “NASA Awards Construction Contract for Rocket Engine Testing,” news release C09-006, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/feb/HQ_C09-006_SSC_A-3_Test_Stand.html (accessed 28 February 2011).
NASA announced that its Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope had captured the first gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever seen in high resolution. The burst, designated GRB 080916C, was the most extreme yet recorded, in terms of its tremendous power and speed. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope had detected the blast on 15 September 2008, and the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor aboard the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope had recorded the event. Thirty-two hours after the blast’s detection, a team at the [Max Planck Institute]] for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, had searched for the explosion’s afterglow. The team at the [Max Planck Institute]] had then captured the field in seven wavelengths, using the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) on the 2.2-meter (7.22-foot) telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile. The capture had enabled the [Max Planck Institute]] team to determine that the blast had occurred 12.2 billion light-years away, in the constellation Carina. Fermi team members had used this information to show that the blast had exceeded the power of 9,000 ordinary supernovas and to calculate that, within the jet, gas bullets had likely moved at 99.9999 percent of the speed of light.
NASA, “NASA’s Fermi Telescope Sees Most Extreme Gamma-Ray Blast Yet,” news release 09-033, 19 February 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/feb/HQ_09-033_Fermi_Gamma-ray_Blast.html (accessed 28 February 2011); Press Association (United Kingdom), “Record Radiation Blast Detected,” 20 February 2009.
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