NASA on Friday set June 5 for the launch of its GLAST space telescope for examining gamma rays to look deep into the universe, two days later than originally planned, the US space agency said.

NASA said in a statement that GLAST -- the gamma-ray large area space telescope -- would launch up into a relatively low orbit around the Earth, around 565 kilometers (350 miles) in altitude, aboard a Delta II rocket next Thursday in the two hour period beginning 11:45 am (1545 GMT).

"The date was chosen at the conclusion of Thursday's flight readiness review to give the launch team sufficient time to make sure remaining open engineering issues are resolved," the space agency said, without detailing the specific issues it referred to.

By giving ground-based scientists a better look at the smallest particles of the cosmos, GLAST will be used in a five to 10 year project to examine black holes, pulsars and cosmic rays in closer detail than before.

The project brings together the governments and academic researchers in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden.