NASA spacecraft launched in June 1999 to explore the universe using high-resolution spectroscopy in the far-ultraviolet spectral region. FUSE was part of NASA's Origins Program. Its instruments included a spectrograph, an electronic camera, and telescope mirrors. In one investigation, the mission searched for deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, in three regions—the interstellar matter, gas clouds in the galaxy, and intergalactic clouds—to understand how galaxies evolve and the condition of the universe when it was a few minutes old.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, was the leading developer and operator of the mission, the first time a university has played such a role in a major mission. Partners are the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of California at Berkeley, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).

After its three-year primary mission, NASA extended operations several times. By the time the mission ended on 18 October 2007, hundreds of astronomers from all over the world used FUSE to observe nearly 3 000 different astronomical objects, totalling over 64 million seconds of successful observing time.