ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for January 2009

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.  

  ...  Provided documentation and code for the temperature-dependent 
CTI correction algorithm to CXC SOT mfor future inclusion in the CXC 
contributed software listing.

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)

  ...  Provided data and statistics on focal plane temperature for
Chandra newsletter article.

  ...  Resumed collecting occasional raw data frames.  Raw frames can
be helpful with diagnosing future problems and better understanding
cosmic ray artifacts.  Plan is to take raw data on a monthly or 
bimonthly timescale.  Examined new raw frames and posted movies to
the web.  (http://space.mit.edu/~fergason/acis/raw.html)

  ...  Two observations of ACIS calibration source in CC mode in
conjunction with reloading of new flight software patch

  ...  Participated in discussion of ACIS contamination calibration
including possible systematics in the ECS measurements and results
from calorimeter measurements of a sibling radioactive source.  Began
investigating presence of fluorine on ACIS calibration sources with
manufacturer.

  ...  Provided statistics on CTI measurement uncertainty as a function
of exposure time as an input to discussions of the radiation zone pad
times.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
A review of the past several months of engineering data discloses 
no significant trends or anomalies.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Flight software patch version 44, after testing indicated
it was not at fault for the ObsID 9209 anomaly (BEP crash during
CC mode run), was reloaded and is executing without problems.

  ...  Reviewed two CAPs to load flight software patch version 44 and
to revert back to version 31, if necessary.

  ...  Reviewed generic CAP to warmboot the instrument and restart DEA
housekeeping.

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.


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.  Discussed
updates to contamination calibration and adding CTI correction software
to the CXC contributed page.  Also discussed possible F-K line in ACIS
calibration source.

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


4.  OCC Support

4.1 Use of MIT/ACIS EGSE at OCC

  ...  Tested functionality of ACIS software monitoring through
the backup 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 preparing a science fair entry on
galaxy clusters - continuation of a Chandra Astrophysics institute
project. (C. Grant)

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