Welcome wagon
Call it the storm before the calm. Students at Homewood will splash around in the Athletic Center pool while watching the classic scare-film Jaws, or line up for a chance at a date with a stranger in a Hopkins version of MTV's Singled Out, while others might get down in the mud in a messy game of volleyball. It's Orientation '98, a chance for the freshman class to make friends and get to know their new home.
   But when the class of 2002 is all moved in and the dust has settled, it will be time for them to begin what they came here to do: study. And for the staff of Orientation '98, the ones who organized these first-week festivities, it also will be time to return to the normalcy of student life. Full story...

FUSE satellite moves closer to launch
After nearly a decade of planning and assembly, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer satellite--planned, designed and built by Johns Hopkins--has taken the penultimate step toward its scheduled Feb. 18, 1999, launch.
   The satellite was moved on Aug. 13 from the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, where it was assembled, to the Goddard Space Flight Center in nearby Greenbelt, where scientists will subject the instrument to a series of environmental tests. If all goes as expected, the satellite will be shipped in December to Cape Canaveral, Fla., and readied for launch.
   FUSE is the first large-scale space mission to be fully planned and operated by an academic department of a university. Hopkins will take control of the three-year scientific mission about 100 minutes after launch and will manage it from a mission control center in the Physics and Astronomy building on the Homewood campus. Full story...

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