| The observing schedule was significantly impacted last week due
to the extremely high levels of solar activity. Following the manual
execution of SCS107 on Oct 24, science was resumed on Oct 25 at 1:55pm
EST but was halted by an autonomous execution of SCS107 on Oct 26
at 2:22pm EST. Loads were resumed but halted once more on Oct 28 at
9:02am EST. Science observing has not resumed since then due to continued
high radiation levels. During the week two maneuver loads were uplinked
to ensure proper attitude during perigee passage and perform momentum
management. The team is monitoring the solar activity closely and
has been developing a series of mission plans to ensure a rapid resumption
of science when possible. A Chandra image release was issued on
Oct 28 that describes a series of observations of the spiral galaxy
NGC 1637 that show the variable nature of the X-ray sources within
the galaxy. For details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/ngc1637/
Of note last week was the Chandra Calibration Workshop and review
held Oct 27-28. The workshop provided the community with the state
of the art of the Chandra team's knowledge of the detectors and
mirrors, and also encouraged the general community to participate
in the process of calibrating the satellite (http://cxc.harvard.edu/ccw/).
The observing schedule for next week is shown below (assuming
solar levels have subsided).
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