Exciting happenings will be revealed when NASA conducts a media teleconference on Tuesday, August 26, at 2 p.m. EDT, to announce the first results from NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, and the observatory's new name. The telecon also will include the Large Area Telescope's first light results, and a presentation of gamma-ray bursts that the GLAST Burst Monitor has seen since it went into operation.

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

• Briefing participants: Jon Morse, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Dennis Kovar, associate director of science for high energy physics, U.S. Department of Energy, Germantown, Maryland
• Steve Ritz, GLAST project scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
• Peter Michelson, Large Area Telescope principal investigator, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
• Chip Meegan, GLAST Burst Monitor principal investigator, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

But wait, there's more . . .

As an accomplished musicologist and composer, Dr. Nolan Gasser has overcome many challenges, but the one from a member of NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) project was unique: write a "theme song" for the complex mission, which will investigate some of the most exotic and powerful phenomena in the universe. Especially since he's a musician and not at all trained in science.

The challenge came from Dr. Peter Michelson at Stanford University, Menlo Park, California, Principal Investigator of the Large Area Telescope instrument on GLAST. Peter wanted to commemorate the GLAST mission with original music.

According to Gasser, Schwob provided "generous funding" for the project, and chose him to compose the work. Nolan Gasser, composer of the GLAST Prelude Credit said that once he accepted the challenge, he had to learn a lot more about GLAST and its science before he could proceed. His research included a lot of reading on the topics of GLAST, gamma rays, the electro-magnetic spectrum, particle physics, the history of astronomy and the telescope, and more. As he learned more, Gasser decided that telling a story using music would work best. To learn more please access this website.