On Jul 23, we celebrated the 27th anniversary of Chandra's launch and 27 years of successful scientific operations. The spacecraft and instruments continue to operate superbly well and we look forward with excitement to the coming year of science discovery!

During the last week Chandra completed the observing schedule as planned.

Preparations were completed for the summer 2026 eclipse season; the season contains eight eclipses and runs from Jul 19 to Aug 7. Real-time procedures were executed on Jul 18 to prepare for the first eclipse: one to activate SCS 29 and one to dump and clear the EPS glitch counters. Chandra passed through the 1st and 2nd eclipses of the season on Jul 19 and Jul 22 respectively, with nominal power and thermal performance.

A further real-time procedure was executed on Jul 20 to uplink a flight software patch to both on-board computers (OBCs) that updates the PCAD Control Law by adding a commandable bias to roll about the solar array normal. The purpose is to minimize solar torque momentum buildup and/or change spacecraft attitude while in Normal Sun Mode at any allowed Sun pitch angle. This extends an existing yaw bias capability that was limited to 90 degrees Sun pitch. Additional real-time procedures were executed on Jul 21, 22, and 23 to dump OBC-A and -B memory as a follow-up to the patch. The dump will be used to update the baseline memory images maintained on the ground.

CIAO contributed scripts package version 4.18.2 was released on Jul 21. This release introduces scripts to simplify the analysis of HETG data with multiple sources present in an observation as well as new tools to visualize source matching for refined astrometric corrections.

Chandra press and image releases were issued on Jul 21 describing observations of a galaxy labeled MQN01 J004131.9-493704, nicknamed the "red potato" owing to its appearance and located about 11.7 billion light-years from Earth at an intersection where gigantic web-like structures of galaxies and gas meet. Chandra, JWST, and Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations show a nearby galaxy with a growing supermassive black hole producing a jet that is apparently impacting the "red potato" and inhibiting the star formation that would otherwise be expected. For details, see: https://chandra.si.edu/press/26_releases/press_072126.html

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes observations of ZTF26aavrgaw, which are follow-ups to a Target of Opportunity accepted on Jun 27 and Jul 20, and an observation of GRB251129A, which was accepted as a Director's Discretionary Time Target of Opportunity on Jun 29.