X-ray sat laid to rest - October 18, 2007
There's been some coverage(AP; Discovery) around on the end of NASA's Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) mission.
FUSE was launched in 1999 and initially had a three year mission lifetime, so the shutdown comes as no great surprise. Still, X-ray astronomers will no doubt miss the satellite, which led to more than 1,200 papers. It's discoveries include a hot bubble of gas around our Milky Way and the discovery of molecular nitrogen in interstellar space.
But astronomers aren't done with FUSE just yet. The team plans to spend a year wrapping up operations, including cataloging some 130 million seconds of scientific data. There's no doubt that some yet-to-be-made discoveries lie within that archive.
Credit: NASA