When the FUSE mission was restructured in 1994, it met NASA Director Daniel Goldin's directive for making missions "faster, better, and cheaper" by relying upon the expertise of the emerging Maryland aerospace industry.
The original FUSE budget of $350 million was reduced to $108 million, thereby limiting precious research and development funds for all components of the mission. Principal Investigator Warren Moos of The Johns Hopkins University and his team decided to enter into partnerships with members of commercial industry to purchase existing hardware and software. In Maryland, four corporations are playing major roles in conjunction with NASA and Johns Hopkins. Hopkins retains the largest responsibility for the FUSE mission. In addition to having the Satellite Control Center on its campus in the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins is accountable for the overall mission, system engineering, integration and testing, mirror assemblies, mission operation and control, and science coordination. FUSE is the first mission of its kind to be developed and operated entirely by a university. The other organizations involved include:
- Orbital Sciences Corporation, in Germantown, Md., is the largest private company to be working on FUSE. They have designed and built the spacecraft which is now available to future NASA missions as part of the NASA Rapid Spacecraft Procurement Program. This development effort, paid for by FUSE, will help future missions meet the faster, better, cheaper directive as well.
- Swales Aerospace, in Beltsville, Md., contributed the instrument structure, scattered light baffles, instrument thermal design and systems engineering.
- Interface Control Systems, in Columbia, Md., designed the instrument flight software and the Satellite Control Center software.
- AlliedSignal Technical Services Corporation, in Columbia, Md., developed the ground station and is tasked with on-orbit Satellite operations.
- The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Md., was the location of the final assembly of the satellite. APL also provided oversight of spacecraft development, instrument and satellite integration and test facilities and the Instrument Data System.
- NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute, located on Hopkins' Homewood campus, developed science data processing and science planning software.
- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., is in charge of the Guest Investigator Program, contract administration and technical oversight.
A product of the FUSE Project at Johns Hopkins University. (8/98)
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