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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 5 June 2020 9.00am EDT

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

Chandra passed through the second, third, and fourth eclipses of the season on May 29, Jun 1 and 3, respectively, with nominal power and thermal performance.

Real-time procedures were executed on Jun 4 to perform a routine self-check of the Electrical Interface Assembly (EIA) Sequencer and to perform a diagnostic dump of the Control Processing Electronics (CPE). Real-time procedures were executed during each ground contact to reset the DSN Outage Dead Man Load.

A Chandra image release was issued on May 29 describing observations of a pair of jets blasting away from the black hole MAXI J1820+070 at 80% the speed of light. The stellar-mass black hole is about 8 solar masses and is accreting material from a closely orbiting companion star, supporting the generation of a relativistic jet. Four observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory taken in 2018 and 2019 allowed astronomers to detect the jets as they slam into surrounding material. For details see: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2020/maxij1820/

A second Chandra image release was issued on Jun 2 presenting a new visualization, "Galactic Center VR," featuring simulations of material streaming toward the Milky Way's supermassive black hole known as Sgr A*. Users can experience the last 500 years of cosmic evolution in this area in a free virtual reality program. By providing a six-degrees-of-freedom ("6dof") VR experience, the user can look and move in any direction they choose. For details see: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2020/gcenter/

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of 4U 1630-47, which is a follow-up to a Target of Opportunity accepted on May 15 and is coordinated with ATCA, an observation of GRO J1008-57, which was accepted as a Target of Opportunity on May 21 and is coordinated with HST and NRAO, an observation of NGC 205 coordinated with NRAO/VLA, and an observation of Haro 1-10, which was accepted as a Target of Opportunity on Feb 19.



------------------------------------------
        IRAS16375-4854         ACIS-I       Jun  8
        N132D                  ACIS-S
        Haro1-10               ACIS-S
        Radiation Belts                     Jun  9
        N132D                  ACIS-S
        HESSJ1731-347NE        ACIS-I       Jun 10
        N132D                  ACIS-S
        HESSJ1731-347NE        ACIS-I       Jun 11
        Westerlund1            ACIS-I
        2RXSJ181151.6-48084    ACIS-S
        Radiation Belts                     Jun 12
        G117.33+0.07           ACIS-S
        Vega                   HRC-I
        Vega                   HRC-S
        Vega                   HRC-S
        Vega                   HRC-S
        Vega                   HRC-S
        GROJ1008-57            ACIS-S/HETG
        Westerlund1            ACIS-I
        G117.33+0.07           ACIS-S       Jun 13
        Spiderweb              ACIS-S
        Westerlund1            ACIS-I
        4U1630-47              ACIS-S/HETG
        Radiation Belts                     Jun 14

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

All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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