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For the latest FUSE mission status report

Goddard's FUSE Launched Successfully on Thursday, June 24 at 11:44 a.m. EDT, Onboard A Delta II Rocket - Congrats FUSE Team!

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FUSE is a NASA-supported astronomy mission successfully launched June 24, 1999 on its way to explore the Universe using the technique of high-resolution spectroscopy in the far-ultraviolet spectral region. The Johns Hopkins University has the lead role in developing and operating the mission, in collaboration with The University of Colorado at Boulder, The University of California at Berkeley, international partners the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the French Space Agency (CNES), and corporate sponsors.

Click on the picture of FUSE to see a quicktime movie of Boeing's Delta 2 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral carrying NASA's FUSE satellite. Source video: NASA TV. (146k QuickTime file). FUSE is part of NASA's Origins Program under the auspices of NASA's Office of Space Science.  FUSE is also part of the Explorers Program at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

This picture shows the FUSE Spacecraft in a clean room at Orbital Sciences Corp., Germantown, MD. The spacecraft provides power, attitude and pointing control, and communications with the ground. The FUSE telescope and instrument attach on top of the structure seen here. March 1998. (Photo: OSC)

FUSE SPACECRAFT WILL SEARCH FOR 'FOSSILS' OF THE BIG BANG

Scientists will soon have a new tool to search for the "fossil record" of the Big Bang and uncover clues about the evolution of the universe. Scheduled to launch June 23, NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) will observe nearby planets and the farthest reaches of the universe and will provide a detailed picture of the immense structure of our own Milky Way galaxy.

The FUSE mission's primary scientific focus will be the study of hydrogen and deuterium (a different form of hydrogen), which were created shortly after the Big Bang. With this information, astronomers in effect will be able to look back in time at the infant universe. By examining these earliest relics of the birth of the universe, astronomers hope to better understand the processes that led to the formation and evolution of stars, including our solar system. Ultimately, scientists hope data from FUSE will allow them to make a huge leap of understanding about how the primordial elements were created and have been distributed since the beginning of time.

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Last Revised: 2 July 1999

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