Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Spacecraft· NASAactive

Fermi — NASA's gamma-ray observatory (since 2008), mapping the most energetic phenomena in the universe, from pulsars to gamma-ray bursts, across the whole sky.

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Key facts

Distance from Sun

1.01 AU

Status

Active

Launched

2008

Mission & specifications

Mission

Operator: NASA
Launched: June 11, 2008
Status: Active

Trajectory

Distance from the Sun: 1.01 AU
Distance from Earth: 487,037 km
Distance from Venus: 0.645 AU

Mission

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope watches the universe in its most energetic light of all — gamma rays, born in the most extreme environments that exist. Launched in 2008 and named for the physicist Enrico Fermi, it sweeps the entire sky every few hours, building an ever-deepening map of the high-energy cosmos. Its main instrument doesn't focus light like an ordinary telescope; gamma rays are too energetic for that. Instead it detects them by the shower of particles they produce on striking the detector, reconstructing where each one came from — which lets Fermi survey the whole sky at once rather than staring at a single point. In doing so it has transformed gamma-ray astronomy. Fermi has catalogued thousands of sources — spinning neutron stars called pulsars, the blazing cores of distant galaxies powered by giant black holes, and the remnants of exploded stars. It routinely catches gamma-ray bursts, the brief, titanic flashes that mark the birth of black holes, and it discovered enormous bubbles of high-energy gas billowing tens of thousands of light-years above and below the centre of our own Milky Way — vast structures, now called the Fermi Bubbles, that no one had known were there.

2008Launch to low Earth orbitLaunch
NASA's gamma-ray observatory reaches orbit.
2009Surveying the gamma-ray skyMilestone
Begins mapping thousands of high-energy sources across the whole sky.
2010The Fermi BubblesMilestone
Discovers giant bubbles of energetic gas above and below the Milky Way's centre.

Images

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope — NASA (public domain) · Wikimedia Commons

Galactic Haze seen by Planck and Galactic Bubbles seen by Fermi — ESA/Planck Collaboration microwave; NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/Dobler et al./Su et al. gamma rays · NASA Image Library

Blazar Artist Concept — NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC · NASA Image Library

GeV-gamma-ray emission regions — NASA/GSFC · NASA Image Library

Cen A Optical Gamma Composite — NASA/GSFC · NASA Image Library

Cassiopeia A supernova — NASA/GSFC · NASA Image Library

NASA's Fermi Telescope Resolves Radio Galaxy Centaurus A — NASA/GSFC · NASA Image Library

Fermi's Motion Produces a Study in Spirograph — NASA/GSFC · NASA Image Library

Images from open archives · credit shown per image