Less redundancy and less access to ongoing engineering support were consistent with NASA policy for missions in their extended phase, where a higher level of risk is allowed. As one example, the Satellite Control Center was staffed around the clock during the Prime Mission but transitioned to a 16-hour per day, Monday through Friday staffing profile in the Extended Mission. Many procedures had to be automated, allowing the project to cut back on staffing and minimize operations costs. The Extended Mission period presented a number of challenges, especially for satellite operations. Some 29 million seconds of science data were obtained during the Primary Mission phase, and a total of nearly 65 million seconds of data were archived from the entire mission. With funding from NASA, the FUSE satellite continued to be operated as an observatory for the broad astronomical community, with 100% of on-orbit observing time selected by NASA peer review. Starting 1 April 2003, the FUSE project entered an extended phase of operations which lasted until mid-2007. During this period, the observing time on FUSE was shared roughly 50–50 between the FUSE science team and a host of Guest investigators, astronomers from around the world selected by NASA to participate in the FUSE program. The first 3.5 years of FUSE operations were dubbed the Primary Mission. However, FUSE will provide sensitivity some ten thousand times greater than Copernicus. Only one previous mission, Copernicus (OAO-3), has given this far-ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The spacecraft was launched as a joint NASA-Canada–France project. The primary objective of FUSE was to use high-resolution spectroscopy at far ultraviolet wavelengths to study the origin and evolution of the lightest elements ( hydrogen and deuterium) created shortly after the Big Bang, and the forces and processes involved in the evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics LaboratoryĨ years, 3 months, 23 days (achieved) įar Ultraviolet Spectroscopy from 100–1800 Angstrom (A)įar Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE – Explorer 77) launch Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer satellite
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