Outsourcing the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) mission from NASA GSFC to the University of California, Berkeley

The NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite was launched on June 7, 1992. EUVE Project Management and Project Science responsibilities at the time of launch were located at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Contracts were awarded to 1) Lockheed Martin Space Mission Systems and Services Corp. (LM), formerly Loral Aerosys, for the command and control of the spacecraft (S/C) bus and 2) to the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) for operation and management of the UCB-built EUV payload and science data processing. In April 1996, UCB and GSFC began the process of jointly "outsourcing" EUVE operations from GSFC to UCB, including the operation of the S/C bus, the role of GSFC Project Scientist, and ongoing Programmatic responsibility for the mission. The transition was successfully completed in March 1997. This paper provides details on the technical and programmatic structure of the mission at the time of the outsourcing, the procurement and technical processes undertaken to accomplish the handover, various challenges encountered along the way, and an enumeration of lessons learned.