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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 6 January 2006 9.00am EST

Happy New Year from the Chandra team.

During the last two weeks the observing schedule was replanned to include a follow-up observation of GRB 051221 that was accepted as a 1 day turn-around Target Of Opportunity (TOO) on Dec 21. Loads were replanned and uplinked on Jan 4. An observation of NGC 1893 was impacted by the TOO and will be rescheduled in a later load.

Preparations were completed this week for the 2006 winter eclipse season consisting of 5 medium eclipses starting on Jan 6. A real-time procedure was performed on Jan 5 to execute SCS 29 in preparation for the first eclipse.

Of note this week was the completion of the 1-month soak period for the Linux version of the ground system. All criteria were met for a successful soak period and the old Silicon Graphics hardware will be taken out of backup configuration and then decommissioned at the end of January.

A Chandra press release was issued on Dec 28 describing an unusual observation that scanned the northern polar region of Earth. The results show that the aurora borealis, or "northern lights", also dance in X-ray light, creating changing bright arcs of X-ray energy above the Earth's surface. For further details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/05_releases/press_122805.html

The schedule of targets for next week is shown below and includes a series of calibration observations of Capella and Vega.

------------------------------------------
Radiation Belts                      Jan 8
N132D                   ACIS-S       Jan 9
Q2237+0305              ACIS-S
GRB051221               ACIS-S
Capella (5 obs)         HRC-I        Jan 10
N132D                   ACIS-S
3C227                   ACIS-S
Radiation Belts                      Jan 11
UGC 4881                ACIS-S
NGC2552                 ACIS-S       Jan 12
Polaris                 ACIS-I
cl0355-3741             ACIS-I
3C 442A                 ACIS-I
HDE 245059              ACIS-S/HETG  Jan 13
Radiation Belts
Vega                    ACIS-I       Jan 14
Vega                    ACIS-S
Vega                    HRC-I
Vega (4 obs)            HRC-S
cl0340-2823             ACIS-I
Betelgeuse              HRC-S        Jan 15
3C227                   ACIS-S
N132D                   ACIS-S

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

All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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