News Release

FUSE satellite 'go' for launch June 23

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Johns Hopkins University

A towering 3,000-pound satellite that will test the Big Bang theory and collect the most complete observations yet of the Milky Way's mysterious star-making machinery will launch on Wednesday, June 23, from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer will begin its three-year mission atop a Delta II launch vehicle at 11:39 a.m. EDT. The launch will be broadcast live from the Cape on NASA Television, with coverage beginning about 10 a.m.

The FUSE mission is the first of this size managed by an academic department in a university. The project is considered a pathfinder because of a unique collaboration with NASA that has given the primary leadership to The Johns Hopkins University. The project manager and the principal investigator are from the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy. The spacecraft control center is located on the first floor of the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy on the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus in Baltimore.

FUSE is a joint project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Johns Hopkins University in collaboration with: Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (France), the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Colorado, and the University of California, Berkeley.

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RELATED LINKS:
Launch status updates
FUSE Project homepage
Photographs of satellite
Mission overview



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