WASHINGTON (AFP) - A technical glitch has forced a minimum 24-hour delay in the launch of the Swift satellite that will study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful and elusive explosions detected in the cosmos.
Persistent problems with the Range Command-Receiver Decoder equipment on the launch vehicle have caused a delay in the launch of the satellite until at least Friday, National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Brucer Buckingham said Thursday.
A decision will be taken later Thursday on whether to launch the Swift satellite on Friday within the same time frame -- Thursday's launch was scheduled between 1700 and 1800 GMT.
Equipped with advanced, powerful telescopes, Swift will be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a multistage Delta II rocket.
Once aloft, the 6.3 meter (19-foot) tall Swift will be placed in a 600 kilometer-high (373 miles) orbit above the Earth where it will use its instruments to detect gamma-ray bursts and quickly track their point of origin and other data.
"The entire design of Swift was oriented around swiftness - being able to immediately detect and observe," said Anne Kinney, head of NASA's Universe division at its Washington headquarters.
"There is no other telescope up there that has that capability," she added.
First detected by chance in 1967, gamma-ray bursts are "high energy explosions that occur nearly once a day from random locations across the sky," a NASA statement explained.
"Scientists suspect the bursts may be produced by the birth of black holes or death of stars, but no one knows for sure.
"In order to find out, scientists need a spacecraft with powerful telescopes and quick reflexes to capture gamma-ray bursts as they flash and leave a lingering afterglow. Swift is precisely such a spacecraft," NASA added.
Gamma rays would be lethal to us on Earth were it not for our atmospheric shield. They emanate from astonishingly powerful phenomena, such as supernovae -- massive stars that, when all their fuel has expired, perish in a violent explosion, spewing out material that later becomes the stuff of new stars and planets.
Another gamma-ray source is mighty bursts from deep space that have only recently been detected and have unleashed fierce debate among astrophysicists.
Some think these blasts could be generated by colliding neutron stars -- tiny, astonishingly dense stars, born in the rubble of a supernova, whose gravitational force compresses the equivalent matter of our Sun into a radius of only 20 kilometers (12 miles). A teaspoonful of matter from a neutron star would weigh millions of tonnes on Earth.
Neutron stars themselves can collapse if their mass becomes too great, and then form black holes -- the mighty maws of space that suck up everything, even light, and are only detectable thanks to the radiation they spray across the Universe.
In 1991, NASA put in orbit the massive, 16-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which determined that the powerful cosmic blasts originated above all outside our own galaxy.
On October 17, the European Space Agency launched its own gamma-ray telescope -- the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
11/18/2004 - 12:51 GMT - AFP