Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Commissioning: Overview of COS Servicing Mission Observatory Verification

Computer Science – Performance

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Scientific paper

The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) in May 2009. COS is designed and optimized to obtain spectra of faint objects at moderate spectral resolution (R˜16,000) with two channels: FUV, covering wavelengths from 1150 to 1450 Å and NUV, covering 1700 - 3200 Å. Two low resolution gratings (R˜1500) cover the 900 - 2050 Å (FUV) and 1650 - 3200 Å (NUV) wavelength regions. An imaging capability is also available on the NUV channel. As part of the HST Servicing Mission Observatory Verification (SMOV) program, an extensive period of checkout, fine-tuning, and preliminary characterization began after the installation of COS. The COS SMOV program was a cooperative effort between the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Instrument Definition Team based at the University of Colorado. Nearly 2800 COS exposures in 34 separate observing programs were obtained during the course of SMOV. Early activities included an initial instrument functional checkout, highvoltage turn-on and initial characterization of the detectors, NUV and FUV channel focus and alignment, wavelength calibration, and target acquisition verification and assessment. Once this initial period was completed, science-related calibrations and verifications were performed in order to prepare the instrument for normal operations. These activities included flux calibration, detector flat field characterization, spectroscopic performance verification, high S/N operation, and thermal and structural stability measurements. We present the design, execution and results of the SMOV program, including the interrelationships and dependencies between the various tasks, and how the pre-launch plan was adjusted in real-time due to changing conditions. 385

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