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The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University October 22, 2007 | Vol. 37 No. 8
 
Goodnight, FUSE

At a post-shutdown celebration, Warren Moos, principal investigator, and William Blair, chief of observatory operations, congratulate each other on the conclusion of a mission that far exceeded expectations. NASA's George Sonneborn, in orange shirt, looks on.
Photo by Will Kirk/HIPS

By Lisa De Nike
Homewood

Originally designed for a three-year mission, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer spent eight years collecting data on everything from nearby stars and galaxies to quasars and planets. So few were surprised when the intrepid little space telescope — managed by Johns Hopkins for NASA from a control room on the first floor of Homewood's Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy — refused to "go gentle into that good night" on its last day of operation. Scientists and engineers had to work longer than anticipated on Thursday afternoon to remotely put to sleep the 18-foot-tall, 3,000-pound satellite, which had spent 130 million seconds observing about 2,800 heavenly objects. Principal investigator Warren Moos gave the telescope its last command at 5:27 p.m. on Oct. 18. FUSE will continue to orbit the Earth for about 30 years, after which it will burn up in the atmosphere.

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