Reprocessing All the XMM-Newton Scientific Data: A Challenge for the Pipeline Processing System

Abstract

2019 will mark the 20-year anniversary of the XMM-Newton Mission. So far, the mission has successfully completed a total of around 14000 pointing observations, and it is expected to continue for many more years, producing a huge number of high-quality science data products.

Data processing of those observations is carried out by the XMM-Newton Pipeline Processing System (PPS) and the products are delivered to the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA). During the two decades many changes have been implemented in the data processing software, partly following improvements to the calibration of the science instruments. Several re-processing campaigns have been undertaken along the mission in order to have an up-to-date and uniformly processed set of high-level science data products in the archive.

This paper is a review of the analysis that has been carried out to achieve re-processing of the science data of the whole mission, and to find a more effective way to do it in the future.