The seven-minute, 44-second firing of the observatory’s Integral Propulsion System raised Chandra’s perigee to an estimated 6,012 miles (9,676kilometers), leaving its apogee, or high point, essentially unchanged at 86,458 miles (139,141 kilometers).

"Initial indications are that all went as planned," said NASA’s Chandra Program Manager Fred Wojtalik, of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The flight operations team will carefully review the observatory’s orbital parameters over the next 24 hours to verify that we are where we need to be."

Meanwhile, the Chandra control team continues to activate and check-out the observatory’s instruments. In the last 48 hours, controllers continued calibration of both the High Resolution Camera and the Advanced Charged Coupled Imaging Spectrometer.

A review of data from the August 4 firing of the Chandra X-ray Observatory Integral Propulsion System now indicates the backup engines performed as expected. Analysis confirms Wednesday's initial indications that the engines performed well.

The five-minute burn positioned the telescope in a new perigee of 3515 miles (5,657 kilometers), and apogee of 86,458 miles (139,141 kilometers), with an orbital period of 61 hours and 7.3 minutes.