After more than 16 years of successful operations, the RHESSI spacecraft is now planned to be decommissioned on October 1 of this year. The on-board receiver has been slowly degrading since 2017, and commanding from the ground has become increasingly difficult to the point where we have not had a successful command since mid-July. We will continue to try to establish contact, but success is very unlikely. The spacecraft has no further scheduled transmissions and is programmed to automatically decommission itself on October 1.
Because of the communication difficulty, the detectors have not been turned back on following the sixth anneal, which started on April 12. Observations ended on April 11 at 01:50 UT and the last flare in the RHESSI catalog was a B5 on March 3. We have already started implementing the Mission Archive Plan as described in the latest RHESSI Senior Review Proposal (http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/senior_review/2017/senior_review_proposal_2017...). For the next few years, RHESSI data products will continue to be accessible on the usual servers. In the future, the archive will be available through the Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC).
Sam Krucker, PI krucker@ssl.berkeley.edumailto:krucker@ssl.berkeley.edu
Brian Dennis, Mission Scientist brian.r.dennis@nasa.govmailto:brian.r.dennis@nasa.gov
Albert Shih, Deputy Mission Scientist albert.y.shih@nasa.govmailto:albert.y.shih@nasa.gov