Two of the missions that I worked on for NASA do X-ray/gamma ray astronomy. Swift detects sources of gamma ray bursts and Astro-H will have an X-ray spectrometer. It turns out that the Earth generates its own gamma ray flashes through natural means.
Video Credit: NASA
It will be interesting to see what they come up with from Firestarter. I’ve been intrigued by sprites and jets since I first heard of them, and as far as I know, no real information has been developed on them as of yet.
Plus, it will be nice to have a little more information on how our environment works, maybe bring us up to 6 or 7% knowledge. Hard to make the case that we know exactly what the climate is doing/going to do when we “don’t even know which type of lightening causes the gamma ray bursts”.