1) FUSE Mission Status
2) Change in NASA Grants Administration
3) U-program Listing Available on-line
4) New e-mail SPAM filter activated at Johns Hopkins
5) Reminder: FUSE Based PhD Theses



1) FUSE Mission Status

	As of this writing, FUSE continues to perform very well in the 
one-reaction-wheel mode. Operations have improved dramatically since the end of 
2005, and both planning and scheduling software and the Attitude Control System 
software on the satellite have undergone continual improvements.  In April 
2006, the last month with complete statistics, we gathered over 700 ksec of 
science data and were guiding for 31.8% of the time, comparable to the 
mission-averaged scheduling efficiency!  Operations so far in May 2006 have 
been even better than in April.  We are very encouraged.

	We have recently taken a careful look at the FUSE effective area, and 
the news is very good.  The sensitivity in the LiF channels has barely changed 
over the last year and a half.  The SiC channels have continued the slow 
decline seen earlier in the mission, but the change is less than our interim 
estimates had indicated.  All of this is to say that the FUSE science 
instrument remains in excellent shape for continued 
operations!

You can always access the latest FUSE Mission Status Report on the web:

  http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/facts/misstat.html



2) Change in NASA Grants Administration

	NASA has transferred the processing and award of all grants across 
the Agency to the NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) at Stennis Space Center. 
Effective May 2006, all new grants submitted for award will be handled by 
the NSSC.  The grants office at Goddard Space Flight Center will continue 
handle all grants that they previously issued, or that were submitted to 
them by the Technical Officer for award before May 1, 2006. There are still 
a small number of new FUSE grants in the processing pipeline at Goddard that
have yet to be awarded.  Requests for no cost extensions or other 
administrative actions should be addressed to the appropriate office that 
issued the grant.  Please consult the list of Points of Contract in the 
Research Grant award document sent to office of sponsored programs at your 
institution. Eventually, all grant communications will be with the NSSC, but 
this will take a few years until all of the Goddard grants are closed.

	The FUSE Project Scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center will 
continue to be the Technical Officer for all FUSE grants.



3)  U-program Listing Available on-line

	With the need for momentum and torque authority management in planning
the FUSE time line, it is important that Mission Planning (MP) has a well 
populated target database over the available sky.  In order to achieve this we 
have taken a subset of previously observed targets and generated the so called 
"U-programs".  These are observations of a nominal time request of 8 ksec used 
by MP to fill in a schedule when regular program targets are not available, 
given the scheduling constraints.  The length of the actually scheduled 
observation is fully at the discretion of MP and can in some cases be quite 
substantial.  U-program observations become publicly available immediately 
(consistent with any quality control issues that may need to be resolved) and
so should be of considerable interest to many in the FUSE community.

In order to make it easier for you to find U-program observations of interest 
to you, we have posted two listings of the targets on the FUSE web site.  The 
page

	http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/users/U-targets_by_ID.html
	
contains a listing ordered by FUSE target ID.  This list provides: target ID, 
target name, object class, R.A. (2000), Dec. (2000), Observation date (for 
observed targets) and the actual exposure time.  The page 

	http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/users/U-targets_by_Obj_class.html

provides most of the same information (but no observation log data), but ordered
by the "Object class" (which are listed, for instance, at 
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/users/Object_class.html, linked from the above pages.)

	We will endeavor to update the observation log data on these pages about
once a month, but any archived data can be obtained from MAST at any time.


4) New e-mail SPAM filter activated at Johns Hopkins


	Please note that the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns
Hopkins University recently activated a new anti-SPAM filter on the machines
used for FUSE e-mail (both individual FUSE staff and project accounts, such as
fuse_support@pha.jhu.edu).  While we have so far seen very few false positives
(i.e. legitimate e-mails being flagged as SPAM), if you were to send us e-mail
without receiving a reply within a reasonable amount of time, please contact
us via telephone to verify that your e-mail did indeed arrive past the 
anti-SPAM filtering.



5) Reminder: FUSE Based PhD Theses

	We'd like to remind you that the FUSE project maintains a web page 
listing all Ph.D. theses that have used or been supported by FUSE data and 
grants.  When available, we also provide links either to an on-line summary of 
the thesis work or to the thesis itself.  We also list theses that are still 
in development.  Please see: 

  http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/papers/theses.html

	If you or your students know of Ph.D. theses using FUSE data, please
submit the relevant information to the FUSE Webmaster account at:

  fuseweb@pha.jhu.edu

Please include Full Title, Full name of the Ph.D. recipient, granting 
institution, month and year of degree (or when expected), and any links to 
on-line information.  See the web page for examples.



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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 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.

Further information about the FUSE Guest Investigator Program can  be
obtained from:  Dr. George Sonneborn; sonneborn@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
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