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Martin C. Weisskopf AAS 2011 May 23

The Chandra X-ray Observatory: Current Status and Future Prospects. Martin C. Weisskopf AAS 2011 May 23. Chandra involves and interests the community. 2979 distinct PIs and CoIs in cycles 1-11 ~200 new PIs and Co-Is per year Involved more than 1350 students and postdocs

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Martin C. Weisskopf AAS 2011 May 23

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  1. The Chandra X-ray Observatory: Current Status and Future Prospects Martin C. Weisskopf AAS 2011 May 23

  2. Chandra involves and interests the community • 2979 distinct PIs and CoIs in cycles 1-11 • ~200 new PIs and Co-Is per year • Involved more than 1350 students and postdocs • Averaging over ~500 papers per year • Consistantly oversubscribed (>5)

  3. Chandra continues to give us new insights Tennant et al. 2011

  4. Working with other obervatories: Chandra & Fermi-LAT

  5. The hunt for the site of the gamma-ray flare!

  6. The hunt for the site of the gamma-ray flare!

  7. Observatory status • Spacecraft is in excellent health – almost in the 13th year • Designed for 3 years with a goal of 5 • All redundant systems are available except one pair of gyro rotors that has been swapped to a backup. • One of the switched gyro rotors is fully healthy and the second has reserve life. Chandra can operate with one rotor from each set • Thermal insulation has slowly degraded • Requires increased pitch restrictions and limits on constrained observations • Mission planning has managed impacts

  8. Observatory status – continued Molecular contamination continues to build up on the ACIS filters

  9. Observatory status • There will (no doubt) be new challenges as Chandra ages • However, overall observatory performance remains • superb • No known limitations to > 20-yr mission

  10. Example future projects

  11. The opportunity for exploration and discovery with Chandra remains as high today as it was at launch

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