Mission Control is not just for Houston, the Goddard Space Flight Center, or even NASA anymore.
After NASA launches its new FUSE astronomy satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in February, it will switch control of the $108 million mission to a control room in the physics building at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
There, scientists and professional operators seated at two rows of computers beneath a video wall will guide the observatory 24 hours a day on its three-year mission.
"It is the first time such a large mission has been built and operated by an academic department of a university," said Hopkins Professor Warren Moos, principal investigator for FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer).
It is an outgrowth of policy shifts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration giving university scientists more control over the design and costs of their space-based research. In the bargain, NASA hopes to provide educational opportunities for students and maybe save some money.
In July, for example, graduate and undergraduate students at University of Maryland, College Park's Flight Dynamics and Control Laboratory took the reins of NASA's 6-year-old SAMPEX (Solar, Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer) satellite.
They are now performing navigational and orbital maneuvers for SAMPEX, a space radiation observatory.
Bowie monitors satellite
At Bowie State University, students and professional operators have taken over the monitoring of SAMPEX's routine flight operations and telemetry.
In June, NASA chose the University of California at Berkeley to design, build and control a $72 million solar flare observatory scheduled for launch in 2000. "It is a new trend," said Tom Stengle, head of the Flight Dynamics Analysis Branch at Goddard. He helped arrange the transfer of SAMPEX operations to Bowie State and College Park.
An 'educational opportunity'
"We saw it as a tremendous educational opportunity," he said. After studying orbital mechanics in a classroom, engineering students can try their hand at determining a spacecraft's orbit. "It's also an opportunity to get universities thinking about what kind of research and development support they can provide us," he said.
But it's also a money thing.
George Sonneborn, NASA's FUSE project scientist, said space scientists clamored for years for more frequent access to space than NASA's big-budget missions and space shuttle launches were providing.
