During the last week Chandra completed the observing schedule as planned.

A real-time procedure was executed on Jun 30 to update SCS 31, a stored command sequence used to reconfigure Chandra into Safe Mode, to switch from high power transmitter mode to low power. This ensures that at low altitudes near perigee the satellite transmitter does not overpower DSN receivers.

Chandra press and image releases were issued on Jun 30 describing Chandra observations of H1821+643, a quasar located in a cluster of galaxies about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth. These observations reveal a supermassive black hole between about three and 30 billion solar masses. Chandra's X-ray observations can also be used to estimate the black hole's spin, which was found to be remarkably slow. This measurement suggests that supermassive black holes undergo most of their growth by merging with other black holes, or by gas being pulled inwards in random directions when their large disks are disrupted (in contrast with lower-mass black holes, which accumulate most of their mass from a more stable disk of gas spinning around them). For details see: https://chandra.harvard.edu/press/22_releases/press_063022.html

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of SDSSJ215954.45-0021 coordinated with the Hobby-Eberly telescope.