ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 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)

  ...  Completed substantial upgrade to spectral line centroid and
  width monitoring including better binning of eventlists, more robust
  fitting and error treatment and complete coverage of all regions on
  all CCDs.  Went live January 2.  (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/line/)

  ...  Continued work on a paper combining CTI, FWHM and background
  monitoring results from ACIS and Suzaku.  Added to and edited text.
  Trying to understand line FWHM (non)evolution on ACIS.

  ...  Discussed possibility of extending ECS observations further
  into the belts to get more calibration data without impacting science.
  Potentially higher temperatures and particle background are
  annoyances but not showstoppers.  Real problem is the analog
  electronics which degrade 10x slower when unbiased (turned off).
  Decided additional data was not worth the risk to the electronics.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

  ...  Received noticed of a yellow caution low warning on DEA-A +28V
  input (1DE28AV0).  Due to a spacecraft-wide voltage drop during a
  perigee maneuver.  No impact on ACIS.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Upgraded Engineering Unit interface computer to a more recent
  one running Solaris.  Purchased new hardware (Linux-based) for the
  EU interface.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  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 - no radiation
  shutdowns in December.

  ...  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 ACIS response discussion group.
  Discussed contaminant rate of deposition and potential relation to
  detector housing heater (unlikely?).

  ...  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.  Had to restart filterServer and remount file systems.

  ...  Work continues on upgrading TST machines to Solaris and then
  Linux.  EGSE code ported to Linux.


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