Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC June 8, 1999
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Donna Drelick
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-8955)
Gary Dorsey
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/516-7160)
RELEASE: 99-68
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.
"We think that as stars age deuterium is destroyed," said
NASA's Dr. George Sonneborn, Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD, the FUSE project scientist. "Mapping deuterium
throughout the Milky Way will give us a better understanding of
how elements are mixed, distributed and destroyed."
"The big questions are these: Do we understand the origins of
the universe, and do we understand how galaxies evolve?" said Dr.
Kenneth Sembach, a FUSE science team member from the Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, MD. "Because FUSE can observe ultraviolet
light that other telescopes can't, we can test in unique ways how
deuterium and other elements are circulated within galaxies. That
in turn may test the limits of the Big Bang theory."
Among the cosmic questions FUSE will tackle are:
-- What were conditions like in the first few minutes after
the Big Bang? Will studying the "fossil remnant" deuterium change
current theories of the Big Bang?
-- How are the elements dispersed throughout galaxies, and
how does this affect the way galaxies evolve?
-- What are the properties of the interstellar gas clouds out
of which stars and planets form?
-- Does the Milky Way have a vast galactic fountain that
gives birth to stars, spews hot gas, circulates elements and
churns out cosmic material over and over?
FUSE was developed for NASA by Johns Hopkins, which has the
primary responsibility for all aspects of the project. NASA is
responsible for the launch. FUSE is the first NASA mission of
this scope that has been developed and operated entirely by a
university. Dr. Warren Moos, Professor of Physics and Astronomy
at Johns Hopkins, is Principal Investigator for FUSE.
The 3,000-pound FUSE satellite consists of two sections: the
spacecraft and the science instrument. The spacecraft, built by
Orbital Sciences Corp., Germantown, MD, contains all elements
necessary for powering and pointing the satellite. The spacecraft
and the science instrument each have their own computers, which
coordinate the activities of the satellite.
The FUSE science instrument, built by Johns Hopkins, consists
of telescope mirrors, a spectrograph, which breaks ultraviolet
light into its component colors for study, and an electronic guide
camera. Johns Hopkins built the FUSE instrument in collaboration
with the Canadian Space Agency, which provided the camera; the
French Space Agency, which provided a component of the
spectrograph; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the University
of California, Berkeley; and Swales Aerospace, Beltsville, MD.
The FUSE mission and science control center is located on the
Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus, Baltimore, with support from
Interface and Controls Systems and AlliedSignal Technical Services
Corp., both of Columbia, MD.
FUSE will be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station, FL,
aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket into a circular orbit 477 miles
(768 kilometers) above Earth, and will orbit about every 100
minutes. The satellite must operate on its own most of the time,
moving from target to target, identifying star fields, centering
objects in the spectrograph apertures and performing the
observations. The three-year FUSE mission costs $204 million.
The Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD manages FUSE,
one of the first missions in NASA's Origins program, for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
Information on the FUSE mission and NASA's Origins program
can be found at:
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu
http://fusewww.gsfc.nasa.gov/fuse/
http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/
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