Held on Webex on 24 October 2025, 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 5pm CEST

In attendance: Hannah Earnshaw, Karl Forster, Catherine Grant, Aitor Ibarra, Elias Kammoun, Jamie Kennea, Felix Meeker-Fürst

Agenda:

  • Introductions and mission operations overview 
  • Status of ACROSS project - Jamie Kennea
  • AOB

Mission overviews:

See links to slides containing presented information.

  • XMM-Newton (Felix Meeker-Fürst): Long ~48-hour orbit with data taken above a certain altitude. Continuous ground station contact is required for data downlink. Fuel savings by going to four reaction wheel drive gives mission lifetime out to ~2035. SOC has absorbed most of the operations work at this point. 
  • NuSTAR (Karl Forster): Low-Earth orbit, orbit lifetime until mid-2030s. Scheduling process: GO program -> SOC (at Caltech) creates schedule and slew sequence -> MOC (at UCB) performs command upload -> spacecraft. Four ground station contacts a day at Malindi (+1 TDRSS contact), average 6 hours between contacts which sets response time. New automated rapid-response ToO system to be implemented soon. Scheduling constraints based on Sun, Moon, star tracker blockages, optics thermal concerns.
  • Swift (Jamie Kennea): MOC and SOC are co-located, allowing for more operational flexibility. ~2000 ToOs per year as of 2025, increasingly automated via API. Observing time is made up of 30-35% GI time, remainder is mostly ToOs, GRBs, calibration, and fill-in programs. Coming up on the end of its orbital lifetime.

Also a note from Catherine Grant who is here in her capacity as lead of the AXIS SOC working group, which is looking to learn from the lessons of existing missions. AXIS requires <1 hour response to ToOs (will also need to balance its operations with long stares), spacecraft will have Swift-like response capabilities but based at L2. 

Status of ACROSS project:

Presented by Jamie Kennea. 

  • Astrophysics Cross Observatory Science Support pilot
  • Goal is to make existing NASA missions better at responding to TDAMM science
  • Deliverables: Feasibility tools, ToO resources, TDAMM web portal, community engagement (4th TDAMM conference 27-30 October 2025)
  • Feasibility tools: standardized interfaces for observing plans, visibility, constraints, target histories etc. Instrument FoV tools. 
  • Planning to launch next week at the TDAMM conference
  • Q: Since ACROSS is a NASA project, what is the plan for working with partner agencies? NASA focus due to NASA funding, so there is leverage with NASA missions. ACROSS 1.0 has NASA focus but eventual goal is to include everyone so ACROSS can either pull data from your API, or you can push to ACROSS API. 
  • Will provide IVOA standard interface on top of ACROSS API, VO endpoints for all NASA missions. If you already have VO endpoints, ACROSS can use them as inputs. 
  • Plan to make tools available for new small missions so they don't have to build their own systems from scratch.

AOB:

Next meeting will be in early 2026, and a poll for a suitable time will be sent around nearer the time. We would particularly like to be at a good time for and hear from missions we didn't hear from this time around. 


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