Everyone likes receiving high-tech presents for Christmas and Hanukkah and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington received a present this year — NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST).

GLAST arrived at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) soon after Thanksgiving on Nov. 28 in a large container. It was shipped by a tractor-trailer truck that transported it from General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Gilbert, Ariz.

GLAST mission engineers opened the protective container that GLAST was shipped in, and were preparing the satellite for testing. It is expected that these tests will confirm that GLAST can endure the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space.

GLAST is scheduled to launch in 2008. It is hoped that this telescope will identify some currently unknown sources of gamma rays, the most energetic light from the extreme environments in the universe.

The satellite will carry two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), to study the extreme universe, where nature harnesses energies far beyond anything scientists can achieve in their most elaborate experiments on Earth.

It is hoped that the GLAST discoveries will enable a better understand of what makes up the Universe and will provide answers to questions about solar flares, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays.

NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.