ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for September 2012

1.  ACIS Characterization

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)

  ...  Nearly finished with an update to spectral line centroid and
  width monitoring.  Uses combined eventlists binned over larger time
  periods to increase statistics in recent data and improvements in
  fitting algorithm.

  ...  Continued work on a paper combining CTI, FWHM and background
  monitoring results from ACIS and Suzaku.  Spectral fitting switched
  to Gehrels statistics.  Results in better fits and more realistic
  error bars.

  ...  Re-requested raw frame observations to replace scheduled
  observations clobber by a radiation shutdown.

  ...  Prepared and presented slides on ACIS status at the Chandra Quarterly.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

2.2 Flight software maintenance


2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussion
  included thermal issues, both ACIS and the spacecraft in general.

  ...  Non-expert MIT ACIS team members successfully took over the MIT
  telemetry pipeline during vacation absences.

  ...  Both ACIS and the Chandra OBC are now ready to respond to a
  radiation trigger from the TXINGs patch.  Changing particle
  background will require revisiting the patch parameters a few times
  a year.  Waiting for first ACIS triggered shutdown -
  ground-commanded radiation shutdown in September did not
  significantly increase threshold crossing rates.

  ...  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

  ...  Reviewed proposed text for V&V reports of data taken at -110C.
  Suggested edits for better clarity and accuracy

  ...  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.



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