ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for March 2006

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

  ...  Continued monitoring of ACIS CTI, gain, trailing pixel pulseheight,
detector efficiency and spectral line centroid and width.  Updated 
monitoring web pages.  (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html)

  ...  Continued work on memo for the operations team on the consequences
of a future, unprotected radiation belt transit by ACIS.  Draft finished
and circulated to ACIS team members.  Discussed at ACIS operation meeting.
Revisions underway.

  ...  Presented ACIS SI team report at the Chandra Quarterly Review


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.
The instrument continues to perform nominally.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in "monthly" ACIS operations meetings. Discussed
thermal issues, ACIS cooling tests, proposed changes to SACGS, and
new memo on radiation belt transits.

  ...  Supported Ops discussion of changes to SACGS (SOT/ACIS Command
Generation Software) to utilize new and better calibrated energy-to-ADU
conversions.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and 
maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.

  ...  Continued to publish the "annotated DOT" timeline reports.


3.  CXC Support

3.1 Provide user support

  ...  Updated ACIS memo listing calibration ObsIDs and observation
characteristics (ACIS Memo #165).

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Working with CXC Cal on CTI correction calibration.  Initial
issues with S3 at -110C calibration products are now resolved.

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modelling discussion group.
Updated group on progress with CTI correction implementation.  

  ...  Reviewed J. Davis memo on factoring the ACIS QE

  ...  Continued to maintain ACIS calibration database of ground and 
flight data products.


4.  OCC Support

4.1 Use of MIT/ACIS EGSE at OCC

  ...  Continued support and maintenance of ACIS EGSE software and 
hardware at the OCC.

  ...  Continued work on improving configuration management of the ACIS
workstations in the TST area of the Chandra OCC.  Work nearly complete.


Outreach:

all recent memos available at http://space.mit.edu/ACIS/iacis.html