ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for May 2010

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)

  ...  Beginning to recalibrate CTI-sacrificial charge correction
used in monitoring.  Quiescent background rates are now trending
downwards as the new solar cycle starts, making recalibration
possible (and necessary).

  ...  Examined raw frames for low pixels.  Found a few examples for
futher study.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
A review of the past 60 days of engineering telemetry shows the ACIS 
instrument continuing to operate within expected bounds.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  In response to last month's stuck FIFO anomaly during the flight 
software patch uploading, wrote a report with a possible solution.  A
special set of ACIS commands have been developed that flush the BEP's
FIFO.  Ground testing is underway.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Continued investigation into whether ACIS can act as it's own
radiation monitor, prompted by action from the thermal working group
which is concerned about the continued degradation of EPHIN.  Preparing
SPIE paper compiling early results.

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed new
reports "Flushing a BEP Command FIFO", "Testing SIMODEs without a Hardware
Simulator", and "Compensate for OBSID Shifts".

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.

  ...  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
status of temperature-dependent CTI correction software and CC-mode 
calibration.

  ...  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.

  ...  Wrote, documented, and tested a script for saving COG data incoming
to the ACIS TST workstation.

Outreach:

none this month

all reports available at http://acis.mit.edu/asc/