XMM Status Report #023: Forward of SOC XMM status e-mail

[Steve Snowden <snowden@riva.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

NASA/GSFC XMM GOF
XMM Status Report #23, XMM Status
16 March 2000

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1) Forward of XMM SOC e-mail news bulletin

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1) Forward of XMM SOC e-mail news bulletin


        Dear Colleagues,

As many people have recently inquired about the XMM-Newton
status, i would like to provide you with a brief update.

Following a review meeting at the Science Operations Centre,
Villafranca, Madrid on 8 and 9 March, the Commissioning
Phase of the XMM-Newton satellite, the spacecraft and the
scientific instruments was declared completed successfully.
The spacecraft's performance is well within specification
and, in a number of areas, well within the predictions made
at the Flight Acceptance Review. The performance of the
X-ray optical system, as measured so far, is in line with
the expectations from ground testing. The scientific
instruments are all fully functional (with the exception of
CCD4 of the RGS2). During this phase too, the Ground Systems
including stations, the Mission Control Centre (ESOC,
Darmstadt) and the Science Operations Centre (Villafranca)
were fully exercised and a number of upgrades will be
introduced as a matter of course. The next phase, the
Calibration and Performance Verification Phase, during which
the real scientific performance and capability of the
XMM-NEWTON mission will be determined, is now underway.

We will start providing updates to the XMM-Newton status WWW
pages on a daily basis shortly, and this will involve
providing public access to the XMM-Newton observing log. We
will provide public access to a limited number of XMM-Newton
Observation Data Files (ODF) as soon as we are sure that
these are fully compliant to their specification, and the
data analysis software and calibration data are in a state
to reliably allow for use of these data sets. Once we will
have all this in place we will announce this in another
general E-mail to all XMM-Newton users.

        Fred Jansen
        XMM Project Scientist

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Resent from the NASA/GSFC XMM GOF


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Dr. Steve Snowden
XMM Guest Observer Facility
NASA/GSFC, Code 662
Greenbelt, MD  20771
Phone: 301-286-8100
Fax:   301-286-1684
E-mail: snowden@riva.gsfc.nasa.gov