Chandra entered Normal Sun Mode (NSM) at 3:23am EST on Jan 6 as the result of a reset of the Interface Unit (IU) on-board the spacecraft. Entry into NSM was nominal and assessment of the telemetry indicated that all spacecraft hardware was performing nominally. Engineering assessment suggested that the reset of the IU and subsequent transition to NSM was due to a single event upset and the decision was made to recover to normal pointing mode and continue with science. The recovery operations took place over Jan 6-7 and observations were resumed on Jan 9 at 6:31am EST with 180.6ks of science loss. The replanned schedule included an observation of Swift J123205.1-1056, which was accepted as a Director's Discretionary Time TOO on Jan 6. Scheduled observations that were impacted by the anomaly and replan will be rescheduled in future weeks.

In addition to the real-time procedures associated with the NSM recovery, a real-time procedure was executed on Jan 7 to initiate a long ACIS CTI data collection while waiting to return to observing and on Jan 9 to perform a routine self-check of the Electrical Interface Assembly (EIA) Sequencer.

A Chandra press release was issued on Jan 5 describing observations of the largest X-ray flare ever detected from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is estimated to contain about 4.5 million times the mass of our sun. Chandra caught this flare, which was 400 times brighter than the black hole's usual output, in September 2013. Researchers also saw a second large X-ray flare a little over a year later. Two theories are being considered to explain these large flares. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/15_releases/press_010515.html

The schedule of targets for the next two weeks is shown below and includes an observation of 2MASS J06593158-040527, which was accepted as a Target of Opportunity on Dec 10, an observation of GRB 130427A, a follow-up observation of a TOO accepted on 2013 Dec 23, and observations of M82 and the Crab coordinated with NuStar and HST respectively.