ROSAT Guest Observer Facility

ROSAT Status Report B

Feb 27 1991


As the deadline for submitting proposals for the second observing season is rapidly approaching, we thought it worthwhile to bring you up to date on the status of the satellite. As you remember, ROSAT experienced a major anomaly in late January, just prior to the scheduled commencement of the pointed observation phase. The satellite was held in safe mode for about a week and a half while the operations staff attempted to determine the cause of the anomaly. No cause has been determined, but changes to the internal safing mode have been implemented to prevent another detector from being lost.

The pointed observations began on February 9, about a day and a half later than scheduled. The first day was spent performing PSPC observations, and then the HRI was switched in. Both detector systems are working nominally, though the PSPC is still in need of a sky calibration. The pointed program has proceeded quite smoothly over this time, with little data loss.

The attitude control system has experienced only one glitch during this time. Both attitude control computers are functional, but only one of the two trackers is working, and only three of the four gyros are within spec. The X-axis gyro is once again experiencing a high drift rate, and remains out of the control loop.

If you are interested in learning the status of the scheduled observations, the most detailed information is available on-line via the MIPS system. Currently the only information available is the six-month long term mission timeline. As we receive updates to this and information about what targets have been observed and what data have been processed, we will add it to the MIPS data base.

The ROSAT data reduction system is rapidly approaching an operational state. Some test data have been processed end-to-end, but there are still a few hangups in the system preventing full-scale production processing. These are being resolved as quickly as possible. It is our hope that we can start providing pointed phase data to PI's within two months.

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Curator: Michael Arida (ADNET); arida@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
HEASARC Guest Observer Facility


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This file was last modified on Tuesday, 14-Sep-1999 11:47:04 EDT

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