ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 2013

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)

  ...  Continued work on a paper combining CTI, FWHM and background monitoring results from ACIS and Suzaku.  Incorporated co-author comments.  Nearly ready to submit.

  ...  Submitted abstract to upcoming SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation meeting on ACIS performance evolution after 15 years.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  Engineering parameters continue their nominal trends.

  ...  Released memo on the Hi-Lo Pixel Anomaly which has occurred twice, most recently on Oct 31.  The memo suggests realtime procedures that could be executed to provide more diagnostic data.   (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/hi-lo-pixel-anomaly-v1.1.pdf)

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Certification tests for flight software patch F-G-H are signed off.  The patch, an update to buscrash2, addresses Software Problem Reports 148 and 150.  (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/ACIS_Patch_F-G-H.pdf)

  ...  The interface to the Engineering Unit has been successfully switched to a Linux machine.  Tested a 10th video board with the ACIS EU, alone and in combination with the other 9 boards.  The tested flight-like board has a crack in a lead to one of the I/Cs, which will be repaired or replaced.
 
2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Released memo on ACIS panel temperatures, including pre-flight thermal testing and ACIS team recommendations on future yellow/red limits.  (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/acis-panel-temps-v1.4.pdf)

  ...  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 planning discussions for the next IACHEC meeting (May 2014 in Virginia).

  ...  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.  

  ...  Migration of MIT realtime telemetry software to Linux continues.  Linux machine has been installed in TST room and is receiving data.  After identical backup machine is installed and checked out, Solaris machines will be retired.  Users are being checked out on the new setup.