Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 1 August 2003 6.30am EDT

Chandra passed 4 years of successful operations on July 23! During the last week the observing schedule was replanned to modify the roll of an existing observation of SNR G11.2-0.3 to allow for a serendipitous observation of the Soft Gamma Ray Repeater SGR 1806-20 that has recently been detected with renewed bursting activity. No other observations were impacted by the replan and loads were uplinked on 30 July. The 2003 summer eclipse season began on July 27 and is the first to be handled with the new autonomous power system management flight software patch. Eclipses on 7/27 and 7/29 were completed with nominal power and thermal performance and the software operated as expected. A Chandra press release was issued on July 30 describing observations that have confirmed that close encounters between stars form X-ray emitting, double-star systems in dense globular star clusters. For details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/03_releases/press_073003.html. The observing schedule for next week is shown below and includes a follow-up observation of the X-ray Flash source H2777 detected last week as a TOO.

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4U 1822-000            ACIS-S/HETG  Aug 3
Abell 1650             ACIS-S
Radiation Belts                     Aug 4
H2777 (TOO)            ACIS-I
E0102-72 (2 obs)       ACIS-I       Aug 5
1E0104+3153            ACIS-S
NGC 5204 X-1           ACIS-S       Aug 6
Radiation Belts
M51                    ACIS-S       Aug 7
M87                    ACIS-S       Aug 8
KS 1731-260            ACIS-S
E0102-72 (4 obs)       ACIS-S
E0102-72 (3 obs)       ACIS-I
NGC 5204 X-1           ACIS-S       Aug 9
Radiation Belts
E0102-72 (4 obs)       ACIS-I       Aug 10
E0102-72               ACIS-S
HD 163296              ACIS-S

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All spacecraft subsystems, with the exception of the MUPS thruster A-1 under investigation, continued to operate nominally.

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