XMM-Newton Status Report - January 2009
Approximately 84 kg of fuel are available and the current usage is around 6 kg per year. The power generated by the solar array now averages 1900 W and the main bus-load varies between 800 and 1200 W, depending mainly on heater utilisation. Mission operations are currently funded until the end of December 2012.
Operations and Archiving
A star tracker Blemish Pixel Survey has been exercised and a small number of new bad/hot pixels have been identified. Implementation of the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) Small Window mode has been finalized and a performance test on a bright target is planned for November 2008. The summer 2008 eclipse activities were fully nominal for all spacecraft elements. The tests for determining whether the Optical Monitor (OM) constraints during slews could be reduced have given positive results: new values (lower than the previous limits by 2° and 3° for the Earth and Moon constraints respectively) are now operational as of 9 September 2008. This will increase the flexibility at mission planning level.
An update of the second XMM-Newton source catalogue was released. It contains over
The first XMM-Newton OM Serendipitous Ultra-Violet Source Survey Catalogue of UV sources detected by the Optical Monitor has been released. It contains
In response to AO-8, 555 proposals were received, corresponding to an over-subscription of the available time by a factor of 7.4. More than 1400 scientists participated.
Around 330 scientists participated in the XMM-Newton symposium: "The X-ray Universe 2008" held 27-30 May in Granada, Spain.
Science Highlights
XMM-Newton has discovered strong quasi-periodic-oscillations in the X-ray radiation from a massive black hole. This is important for the theoretical understanding of Active Galactic Nuclei.
In total over 1900 refereed papers directly based on XMM-Newton results have been published at a rate of around 300 each year.
Legal disclaimer
This report is based on the October 2008 SPC submission. Please see the copyright section of the legal disclaimer (bottom of this page) for terms of use.