During the last week the observing schedule was replanned to incorporate an observation of GRB 140903A, which was accepted as a Target of Opportunity on Sep 4. A portion of a planned observation of IGR J11014-6103 was impacted by the replan and will be rescheduled in a future week.

A real-time procedure was executed on Aug 29 to perform a check-out firing of the A-side MUPS thrusters, which are selected for use when Chandra is in its safe-mode configuration. Thrusters A3 and A4, on the cold side of the spacecraft, performed nominally. Thruster A2, on the hot side, exhibited a few low-thrust pulses in a first series of ten pulses. A second series of ten pulses showed nominal performance with slightly lower overall thrust than the A3 and A4 thrusters. The thruster A2 performance difference is consistent with gas bubbles forming in the stagnant fuel in the line over the past year. Thruster A1 was not fired due to the expected limited life remaining on it. The results of the check-out provide confidence that the MUPS-A thrusters would be effective at unloading momentum in Safe Mode.

A real-time procedure was executed on Sep 3 to perform a routine self-check of the Electrical Interface Assembly (EIA) Sequencer.

Of note this week was the release on Aug 29 of CALDB 4.6.3 which includes new time-dependent ACIS Gain (TGAIN) files for the period May-July 2014, an update to the TGAIN files for the period Feb-Apr 2014, and new predictive HRC-S QEU files for 2014-2020.

The replanned schedule of targets for the next week is shown below