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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 27 August 2004 7.30am EDT

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

A real time procedure was completed nominally on Aug 23 to uplink OBC flight software patches to SCS 101 and SCS 31. The software patches implement an improved approach to patching the CPE during safe mode transitions and eclipse operations. Specifically, SCS 101 was created to contain all required CPE patches and SCS 31 was modified to call SCS 101 during eclipse operations.

The IEPHIN instrument exhibited anomalous behavior on Aug 25 during a period of elevated operating temperature. The power supply voltage dropped as it became current limited due to the high temperature and returned to its nominal value once the unit cooled following a maneuver to a new attitude. This behavior has been seen before and mission planning constraints have been in use to avoid high temperatures. In this case the actual temperature exceeded the projected value by a small margin, and as a result the constraints and temperature prediction software will be reviewed.

To mark the 5th anniversary of the release of Chandra's first light image a Chandra press release was issued on Aug 23 describing a one million second observation of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. The spectacular image shows bi-polar jets of silicon and reveals clues about the complexity of the the initial explosion of massive stars. For details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/04_releases/press_082304.html See also http://chandra.harvard.edu/fifth for a special celebration web site.

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of M31 coordinated with HST.

------------------------------------------
Radiation Belts                     Aug 29
SNR1987A               ACIS-S/LETG  Aug 30
Sculptor Dwarf         ACIS-S       Aug 31
3C465                  ACIS-S
SBS 1520+530           ACIS-S
F1400-1151             ACIS-S       Sep 1
Radiation Belts
SNR1987A               ACIS-S/LETG 
M1-92                  ACIS-S       Sep 2
M31-bulge              ACIS-I
Abell85 (6 obs)        ACIS-I
Radiation Belts                     Sep 3
Abell85 (2 obs)        ACIS-I       Sep 4
The Crab Nebula        ACIS-S/HETG
SNR1987A               ACIS-S/LETG

------------------------------------------

All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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