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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 11 January 2002 5.00pm EST

Last week the observing schedule was interrupted due to high radiation associated with solar flare activity. The loads were halted on Jan 10 at 10:17pm EST through a ground command to execute the SI Safing SCS 107. This ensured that the accumulated radiation dose for ACIS remained below the allowed threshold. Loads were rebuilt for uplink at 4:15pm EST on Jan 11, when the radiation environment reached have an acceptable level.

Leon Van Speybroeck of SAO was awarded the Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the AAS on Jan 10. The prize is in recognition of Leon's long involvement with X-ray optics, culminating in the outstanding success of the X-ray telescope flown on Chandra. We all offer Leon our congratulations!

Also announced at the AAS were two Chandra press releases. The first on Jan 8, described observations of a galaxy cluster showing regions void of X-ray and radio emission. The second on Jan 9 showed the first Chandra mosaic image of the center of the Milky Way, allowing a separation of the point source and diffuse components. Full details of these releases can be found at: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/02_releases/press_010802.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/02_releases/press_010902.html

Two real-time procedures were run on Jan 10, one to update the on-board ephemeris and the other to halt the loads due to radiation on Jan 10 as described above.

The schedule of observations for the coming week are shown below and include an observation of NGC 5548 coordinated with HST.

------------------------------------------
PSS0209+0517           ACIS-S        Jan 14
Betelgeuse (3 obs)     ACIS-I
CHVC125                ACIS-S
Radiation Belts                      Jan 15
M87                    ACIS-S
M31 (5 obs)            HRC-I
NGC 5548               ACIS-S/HETG   Jan 16
Radiation Belts                      Jan 17
NGC 5548               HRC-S/LETG    Jan 18
Radiation Belts                      Jan 20

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

All spacecraft subsystems continued to operate nominally.

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