What the coming months hold

Martin Kessler

The move of the Science Operations Team to Vilspa is nearing completion. The first major group of moves was at the end of 1994. In May 1995, a second group left ESTEC for Vilspa at the same time as members of the PI teams left their institutes also for Spain. The establishment of the Science Operations Team as an integrated unit on one site will be completed by the end of August, when the Science Team - having closed PDEC and tidied up all the observations's databases - arrive.

Following the launch of ISO , there will be a Satellite Commissioning Phase of about 3 weeks, during which, inter alia, the final operational orbit will be achieved, the performance of the spacecraft established, the cover closing the cryostat ejected and some initial engineering-orientated checkouts of the instruments completed, including determining their relative pointing directions.

The next phase of the in-orbit operations will be the Performance Verification (PV) Phase. During this period of about 55 days, the detailed performance and core calibrations of ISO 's four instruments will be established. Each instrument will be operated for one orbit at a time on a four-day cycle. Thus, towards the end of January 1996, it is planned to start routine operations.

At the end of the PV phase, the in-orbit performance of ISO will be reviewed against the expected values by SOC staff, the ISO Science Team and members of the Observing Time Allocation Committee. This review may lead to the adjustment of planned observations. Whenever possible, these modifications will be made directly by SOC staff, in close communication with the Observers. However, we are keeping open the possibility of re-opening PDEC should a large volume of complex modifications become necessary.

Proposals for Discretionary Time may be submitted to the SOC during the mission. An average of up to 30 minutes spacecraft time per day is available for ``observations that could not have been forseen at the time of proposal submission''. Please watch our World Wide Web (WWW) home page for information on applying.

A Supplemental Call for Observing Proposals will be issued some time in the second quarter of 1996. Again, further details will be announced via this newsletter and on our WWW server.