FUSE: a different approach to lowering cost

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) is a NASA mission presently in hardware development which will extend the high resolution spectroscopic analysis of astronomical radiation from the short wavelength cutoff of the Hubble Space Telescope down to the Lyman limit at 912 Å. With the continuing funding restrictions in the NASA budget, the feasibility of this project was threatened by the estimated cost. This paper presents the approaches which led to a more than fifty percent reduction in cost. First, the team prioritized the science goals, identifying the properties of the instrument essential for mission success. Second, the principal investigator was given responsibility/authority for all segments of the mission except launch. Third, the technical approach utilized industrial capabilities acid “off the shelf” designs as much as possible while the management approach emphasized a fast track schedule, delegation of responsibility to the subsystem level and a fixed cost cap for each subsystem with the understanding that requirements would be traded to stay within budget