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

Chandra passed through the sixth, seventh, and eighth eclipses of the season on Aug 3, 6, and 8 respectively, with nominal power and thermal performance.

A real-time procedure was executed on Aug 3 to perform a check-out of the B-side MUPS thrusters, which had not been fired since Aug 1999. The check-out goals were to assess the safe-operation and performance of the B-side thrusters prior to moving forward with a swap to using them for routine momentum unloads, saving the A-side thrusters for safe-mode operation. The two thrusters on the cold side of the spacecraft exhibited nominal thrust levels; however, the two on the hot side showed reduced thrust. The under-performance was anticipated as a possibility by the engineering team and it is theorized that it is due to gaseous helium bubbles passing through the thrusters. It is expected that these bubbles will pass with additional thruster pulses.

A real-time procedure was executed on Aug 7 to perform a routine self-check of the Electrical Interface Assembly (EIA) Sequencer.

Of note this week was the release on Aug 6 of CXCDS 10.0.1 for standard processing, which includes a small number of bug-fixes and enhancements, and on Aug 7 of version 4.5.4 of the CIAO Script package.

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of the Crab coordinated with HST and an observation of Sgr A coordinated with the EVLA.