ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for October 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.  Writing up as a paper.

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 hardware continues to operate nominally.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Flight software standard patch release D is undergoing
testing.  This version includes two new standard patches, badpix 
and buscrash2, which address software problem reports 141 and 142.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.  Presented
updated ACIS CTI data history, specifically looking for changes since
the perigee backoff time was reduced.  Included background rates which
are relevant to the sacrificial charge correction to CTI.

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed
ACIS focal plane temperatures, status of flight software update, 
thermal trends, and proposed changes to the default CC mode grade 
selection.

  ...  Provided updated focal plane temperature data and statistics 
for rescheduled FDB presentation about SIM FA6 heater.

  ...  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
proposed update to the ACIS contamination model and plans for the upcoming
Chandra Users Committee.  Continuing discussion over email.  Discussed
options for changing the default CC mode grade selection.

  ...  As part of the contamination investigation, provided information 
on ACIS-S3 performance at low energies, both simulated event lists and
sub-assembly lab data.

  ...  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.


Outreach:

none this month

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