Mission Info

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a powerful space observatory that unlocks a view in the high energy fields of the universe. The satellite sees pulsars, active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, and the remnants of exploding stars. Fermi detects gamma rays using its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM). The GBM detects lower-energy emissions, which has helped it identify more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts: energetic explosions in galaxies extremely far away. The LAT sees about one-fifth of the sky at a time and records gamma rays that are millions of times more energetic than visible light.

Fermi continues to map the entire high-energy gamma-ray sky every three hours. Physicists are able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists are gaining valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe.