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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 13 March 2009 9.00am EDT

During the last week Chandra completed the observing schedule as planned.

A flight software patch was uplinked on Mar 6 to modify the RadMon process K-constants. The patch added the HRC anti-coincidence shield rate as a new channel used to monitor for high radiation. The step was taken to counter degradation in the EPHIN radiation detector due to increasing temperature trends through the mission.

A Chandra image release was issued on Mar 10 of the Medusa galaxy (NGC 4194). The composite X-ray and optical (Hubble) image shows a tidal tail formed by a collision between galaxies (Medusa's "hair"), and an black hole seem in X-rays. Recent research on a sample of galaxies including NGC4194 has investigated the correlation between the formation of stars and the production of X-ray binaries. For details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/medusa/

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

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Radiation Belts                     Mar 14
GRB090102              ACIS-S       Mar 15
SDSSJ095209.56+21431   ACIS-S
ComaCluster            ACIS-S
GRB090102              ACIS-S       Mar 16
SDSSJ094426.96+04295   ACIS-I
A1795                  ACIS-I
A1736                  ACIS-I
EtaCar                 ACIS-S/HETG
SPT-CL0001-5748        ACIS-I
Radiation Belts                     Mar 17
EtaCar                 ACIS-S/HETG
A1736                  ACIS-I       Mar 18
HZ43                   HRC-S/LETG
AEGIS-3                ACIS-I
SDSSJ1418+2441         ACIS-S
NGC5394/5              ACIS-S
NGC3221                ACIS-S       Mar 19
0402-362               ACIS-S
1311-270               ACIS-S
A1736                  ACIS-I
A1736                  ACIS-I
Radiation Belts
AEGIS-3                ACIS-I       Mar 20
CasACCO                HRC-S
PSRJ2051-0827          ACIS-S       Mar 22

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All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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