SWAP LYRA Calibration between 2014-Mar-26 09:00 UT and 2014-Mar-27 19:40 UT

There will be no regular science data from SWAP between about 2014-Mar-26 09:00 UT and 2014-Mar-27 20:00 UT due to a calibration event.

During roughly the first 28 hours of this event a "bake out" procedure will be performed on SWAP. From about 2014-Mar-27 13:00 UT until the end of the campaign the spacecraft will also be off-pointed by five degrees from the Sun. During this off-point both SWAP and LYRA will measure temperature-sensitive dark current, the main source of instrumental noise. These measurements allow us improve the calibration of our observations. Following the concluson of this campaign, the satellite will be returned to its nominal sun-centered pointing.

The five-degree off-point procedure will last for roughly the final six hours of our campaign, during which time there will be no regular science or space weather data available from PROBA2. Though SWAP will be offline throughout the campaign, LYRA data may be sporadically available during the first 28 hours of the calibration campaign. However, we caution observers not to plan on the availability of data from either of the sun-observing PROBA2 instruments during Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

A bake out involves warming up the CMOS detector to evaporate contaminants, such as water vapor and hydrocarbons, that may have collected on the cold detector surface and anneal out the traps to maintain the performance of the instrument.