ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for November 2008

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs

  ...  Continued work on irradiation/annealing tests done at GSFC
in 2005.  Retrieving additional raw data from tape.  

  ...  Executed new SI modes which allow more grades to be 
telmetered.  These SI modes are being used to compare TE and CC 
mode grade rejection to help calibrate CC mode.  Three ObsIDs 
(57521, 57502, 57484) in November.

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

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


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
ACIS continues to operate in nominal fashion.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Continued investigation of ObsID 9209 anomaly (BEP crash during
CC mode run soon after loading flight software patch version 44).  
Did additional testing of new and old versions in TE and CC mode with
the ACIS engineering unit.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Continued close monitoring of ACIS focal plane 
temperatures.

  ...  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.

  ...  Updated telemetry processing scripts in response to SAO computer
upgrade.

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

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modeling discussion group.  

  ...  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:

Mentor to high school students participating in the Chandra
Astrophysics Institute (C. Grant)

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