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Overall Status
Martin Kessler
The satellite is in excellent condition. A separate article reports on the violation of the Earth constraint, which, however, had no lasting ill effects. ISO's cryo-system continues to behave as predicted with the temperatures and helium mass flow rates being nominal. The current estimate of the total lifetime is 24 +/- 2 months, based on models and measurements of temperatures and pressures. A first direct measurement of the remaining liquid helium in the tank is being planned for early September 1996. One of the highlights of the ground segment is the mission planning system, which routinely produces very efficient schedules of highly-graded observations. About 90-95% of the available science window is being used for observations and ISO averages 45 observations a day.
The apogee of ISO's orbit slowly drifts eastward. A station-keeping manoeuvre, using the hydrazine system, is being planned for early September to give ISO a slight westward drift. A second manoeuvre will be planned for about one year later.
At the end of the performance verification phase, 16 observing modes (80% of total) had been released for use by guest observers. At the end of June, the LWS ``Fabry-Pérot Line Spectrum'' AOT (LWS04) was also released.
Plans for release of the remaining observing modes are as follows. For polarisation (CAM05, PHT50, PHT51), some test cases are scheduled for 3 July to evaluate the end-to-end handling of these modes; release dates will then depend on the results of these tests and available resources. For absolute photometry with ISOPHOT (PHT05/25), the AOTs have been re-designed and are not expected to be released before ~ August 1996. The LWS ``Fabry-Pérot Wavelength Range Spectrum'' AOT (LWS03) needs further in-orbit checks and is not expected to be released before ~ August 1996.
Observations are not released for scheduling until the Observer has given an explicit go-ahead by agreeing to a ``PH'' (proposal handling) report. The process of updating programmes in the light of the in-orbit performance is nearing completion. About half of the updates have been made by Observers specifying the changes to the SOC via an e-mail to HELPDESK, about one-third by a remote login and the remaining one-sixth via a visit to PDEC in ESTEC or to IPAC. Observers may check the ISO Observing Log for the status of their programmes. By 18 June, ISO had carried out 4425 observations, totalling 1721 hours, during the routine phase.
Shipping of all products from released AOTs to all observers started from revolution 173 (i.e. 7 May). Currently, the edited raw data (ERD) for all instruments and standard processed data (SPD) and auto analysis results (AAR) for CAM01, CAM03, CAM04, LWS01 & LWS02 have been declared ``scientifically valid''. A README file, accompanying the data products, gives further information and strong caveats about using as-yet-unvalidated products. Reprocessing and shipping of the products for the CAM and LWS-grating AOTs from the start of the routine phase is underway.
Included with the data products are a set of five ISO Data Users Manuals (IDUMs), one for ISO and each of the instruments. These include caveats on the current status of data processing and products. Feedback - via messages to HELPDESK - from Observers on the data products and IDUMs is particularly welcome as we are still in the early stages here.
Further details on ISO's status may be found on the public WWW server at http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/iso.
Next: Conferences Up: Contents Previous: Introduction
Kieron Leech
ISO Science Team
Wed Jul 17 12:21:28 MET DST 1996