Construction and ground tests of the Large Area Telescope of the GLAST space mission
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is an international, multi-agency satellite mission with a vast and ambitious physics program in gamma-ray astronomy, particle astrophysics and cosmology and will be launched in December 2007. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) is the main instrument onboard GLAST. The LAT is a unique pair conversion telescope with a very large energy band (20 MeV - 300 GeV) point spread function down to arcmin level and very large effective area (9000cm2). The LAT was implemented making use of the most advanced particle detectors, like a 74m2 silicon strip tracker, full custom readout electronics and stiff, light structural mechanics mostly based on composite materials. Highlights of the LAT instrument performance and of the main calibration phases are discussed here, as well as their impact on the mission discovery potential.
