"FAME will provide a rich and unprecedented database for a wide range of studies in stellar astrophysics," says Dr. P. Kenneth Seidelmann, the Director of Astrometry at the Naval Observatory and the Chairman of the FAME science team. "It will be the most accurate astrometric catalog in history."

Astrometry, the science of determining positions of stars, is the oldest branch of astronomy. Astrometric measurements will not only determine the positions of stars on the sky, but also the distances to stars by measuring their parallaxes. The parallax is the apparent change in a star's position due to the Earth's revolution around the Sun over the course of a year. "Astrometric observations are fundamental measurements that are the foundation of almost all of astrophysics," says Sean Urban, a USNO astronomer.

FAME will be able to detect giant planets larger than twice the mass of Jupiter orbiting neighboring stars. By measuring the positions of stars over time, FAME will be able to detect the "wobbling" of stars due to companion objects such as other stars, brown dwarfs, and giant planets.

By directly measuring the distances to a special class of stars called Cepheids, FAME will improve our knowledge of distances to galaxies and our understanding of the size of the universe.

Cepheids are currently used for this purpose, however distances to the Cepheids themselves are not known precisely; FAME will solve this problem. FAME will also be able to determine the amount of dark matter in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy by observing its gravitational influence on stellar motions.

"FAME will give us the ability to study the variability of a large number of Sun-like stars, enabling us to put the Sun's activity level in the context of other similar stars," says Dr. Scott Horner of the U.S. Naval Observatory, "This will indicate whether solar variability may change on long time scales, with possible implications for climate change on Earth."

FAME's innovative design uses a solar sail to utilize the pressure from sunlight to change the orientation of the spacecraft in order to scan the entire sky. The FAME telescope looks in two directions at once to achieve its high accuracy. It rotates with a period of 40 minutes.

The FAME team is lead by Dr. Kenneth J. Johnston, the Scientific Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. The FAME project is a collaborative effort of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington, DC), Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space Advanced Technology Center (Palo Alto, CA), and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (Cambridge, MA). The FAME project has a total mission cost to NASA of $162 million, with additional support provided by the Navy to extend the duration of the operation of the FAME satellite .

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Oxford - October 18, 1999 - Time seems to be the most powerful force, an irresistible river carrying us from birth to death. To most people it is an inescapable part of life, a fundamental element of the Universe.