ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for September 2015

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

  ...  Following the Chandra safe mode on September 21, verified ACIS was safe, monitored housekeeping data, supported safe mode recovery.

  ...  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).

  ...  CLD files ready for RTS ECS CTI measurements with 4- and  5-CCDs.  Working on new CAPs and procedures to go with them.

  ...  Prepared slides and presented at Chandra Quarterly.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  Engineering housekeeping remains nominal.

  ...  Continuing to review decision trees and SOPs for the ACIS operational response to PSMC power anomalies.

  ...  Edited draft of SOP to run the EEPROM checksum routine and dump the EEPROM contents based on reviewers comments.  Nearly complete.

  ...  Powered off ACIS engineering unit in response to elevated room temperatures.  Engineering unit returned to readiness after building A/C was repaired.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Flight software patch F-G-H (improved buscrash2) uploaded in June 2014 and has continued to run with no issues.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed progress in various flight procedures, plans for bakeout studies, thermal trends and Chandra pointing accuracy.

  ...  Co-author on an SPIE proceedings paper, "Modeling contamination migration on the Chandra X-ray Observatory III".  Reviewed and submitted.  Contamination migration studies in this paper have been producing lively discussion in the ACIS community.

  ...  Continued discussions with MIT materials science researchers who study irradiation and annealing.  They will provide expert review of our interpretation of the ACIS reverse annealing experience.  Confirmed that CCDs used in previous irradiation/annealing experiment are still available in the lab.

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.  Discussed plans for future radiation monitoring with more limited access to ACE data.

  ...  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.  Discussion included CC-mode QE and background, low-energy gain on S1, contamination measurements, and bakeout studies.

  ...  Participated in planning telecon for next IACHEC meeting (March in Pune, India).  Discussed meeting logsitics and program.

  ...  Prepared summary of IACHEC CCD Working Group activities for upcoming IACHEC newsletter.

...  Answered SDS question about whether the pipeline should know what to do with 1x3 pixel islands.  Only available in CC1x3 mode which has never been used on orbit and is completely uncalibrated.

  ...  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.  

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued in training in ACIS command generation and operations procedures including load reviews, SAR/SOP creation, and TST room maintenance.  Eventually will take over some of Royce Buehler's tasks when he retires at the end of the year.  Reviewed SEP2115A load and OCT0515 OR list.

  ...  Assigned 3 SI modes on request.

  ...  Created & assigned SI modes for entire AO-17 period, plus 1-chip drop contingencies for these modes.  Installed corresponding ACIS tables at the OCC.

  ...  Developing new ACIS rule to issue a warning about potential pointing inaccuracy when assigning an SI mode with a small subarray or spatial window.

  ...  Reviewed, updated and corrected SACGS documentation.