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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 14 December 2007 7.00am EST

During a real-time pass on Dec 13 the ACIS Digital Processing Assembly Side-B (DPA-B) was detected in an unexpected powered-off state. Assessment indicated behavior consistent with two prior cases where DPA-A powered-down, in Oct 2000 and Dec 2002. In those cases the power-down was attributed to a spurious command from the SIM RCTU, likely caused by a single event upset. A real-time procedure was successfully executed at 9:45pm on Dec 13 to restart the DPA Side-B and warmboot the ACIS Back End Processor. An observation of AEGIS-1 was impacted by the event.

An aspect camera dark current calibration was performed from the on-board loads on Dec 10. Assessment of the data indicated nominal aspect camera performance and that the number of CCD warm pixels is increasing at the expected rate.

A Chandra image release was issued on Dec 10 of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51). In the composite Chandra and HST image, the Chandra data reveal sources that are black holes and neutron stars in binary star systems, as well as the diffuse glow of hot gas that permeates the space between the stars. For further details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/m51/

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes observations of M31 coordinated with XMM-Newton and LP412-31 coordinated with the VLA.

------------------------------------------
2A 0335+096            ACIS-S       Dec 16
M31                    HRC-I        Dec 17
S06                    ACIS-S
Alpha Centauri         HRC-I
J0722.6-0931           ACIS-I
3C105                  ACIS-S
J0805+2458 (3C192)     ACIS-S
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I       Dec 18
Radiation Belts
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I
AP 139                 ACIS-S       Dec 19
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I
J0811.5+0937           ACIS-I       Dec 20
2A 0335+096            ACIS-S
S32                    ACIS-S
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I
Radiation Belts
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I       Dec 21
J0831+3219             ACIS-S
3C171                  ACIS-S
cl0838+1948            ACIS-I       Dec 22
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I
cl1630+2434            ACIS-I
S07                    ACIS-S
LP412-31               ACIS-S
SDSS J083749.59+36     ACIS-S       Dec 23
AEGIS-1                ACIS-I

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

All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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