June 14, 2007
Dear FUSE Community,
I am delighted today to be able to tell you that FUSE is back in science
operations! After a month of intensive effort by the FUSE operations team here
at JHU, the observatory was brought back on-line late Tuesday evening, June 12,
2007.
The skew reaction wheel was brought back into service on Thursday May 24, and
has been spinning since that time. The initial performance was uneven, but
settled down after the first 24 hours. Since that time, the wheel performance
has continued to improve, and the friction levels and wheel performance are now
essentially as they were prior to the anomaly. Remarkably, with continued use
over the last several weeks, the wheel has returned to normal.
And when I say we are back in operations, I mean it! We are on a science
timeline with the doors open and the high voltage on the detectors. We are
taking data. A preliminary look at the data obtained over the last 24 hours
verifies that the scientific performance is nominal. Our mission planning team
has currently generated science timelines through the end of the month, and
reported no difficulty in doing so while keeping the wheel spinning in one
direction, which is being done at least for now as a precautionary measure.
We are once again back in business, and we have resumed executing the Cycle 8
science program!
I would be remiss if I did not thank the many people on the FUSE operations
team, at Honeywell Technical Solutions Inc., at Orbital Sciences Corporation,
and at NASA/GSFC and HQ who have supported us over the last month during the
recovery of science operations. It was an amazing effort.
Thanks for your continued support of and interest in the FUSE mission.
Bill Blair
FUSE Deputy PI and
Chief of Observatory Operations
P.S. As a reminder, FUSE Status Reports are posted on our web page,
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu
The Observer's Electronic Newsletter is published by the FUSE project and is aimed at the FUSE user community.
Editor: B-G Andersson, FUSE Guest Investigator Officer.
The FUSE Project is managed by the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Astrophysical Sciences in Baltimore, MD, for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The FUSE Principal Investigator is Dr. Warren Moos, the FUSE Program Manager at JHU is Mr. Randy Ewing, and the NASA Project Scientist for FUSE is Dr. George Sonneborn.