GLAST Mission Overview and Science Opportunities

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled for launch in late 2007, is a satellite-based observatory to study the sky in high-energy gamma-rays. There are two instruments on GLAST: the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which provides coverage from 20 MeV to over 300 GeV, and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), which provides context observations of transients from 8 keV to 30 MeV. The LAT will provide dramatic improvements in sensitivity, angular resolution, and energy range relative to the highly-successful EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (1991-2000). In addition, the solid-state technology of the LAT will allow vastly improved sensitivity to bright high-energy transients. The very large field of view will contain 20% of the sky at any instant and the LAT will obtain essentially complete sky coverage every 3 hours. This talk includes descriptions of the instruments and their performance characteristics, the opportunities for guest investigators, and the current status of the mission.