ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for October 2015

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).

  ...  New template CAPs and how-to-use procedures for RTS ECS CTI measurements finished and posted.  New versions can use fewer than six CCDs, if thermal conditions warrant.


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.

  ...  Preparing to run SOP "DEA and FEP diagnostics procedure" in real-time in November.  Reviewing procedure.

  ...  Finished SOT SOP to run the EEPROM checksum routine and dump the EEPROM contents.  Added additional required command to ACIS tables.  Reviewed by full ACIS team.  Reviewer's comments included in v2.0.  Sent on to FOT for development.

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, and plans for real-time execution of new DEA FEP diagnostic SOP.

  ...  Continued discussions with MIT materials science researchers who study irradiation and annealing.  They are providing expert review of our interpretation of the ACIS reverse annealing experience.

  ...  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 contamination measurements and bakeout studies.

  ...  Co-author of paper for the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems on "On the in-flight calibration plans of modern X-ray observatories" a product of the IACHEC Heritage Working Group. Submitted final round of edits to first author in response to referee comments.  Paper re-submitted.

  ...  Provided ACIS on-board background rejection rate to user.

  ...  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.  Reviewing list of Royce's tasks with ACIS personnel to find potential gaps.

  ...  Developing new ACIS rules to a) issue a warning about potential pointing inaccuracy when assigning an SI mode with a small subarray or spatial window, b) issue a warning about potential pileup when the estimated counts-per-frame is high, and c) fix a pre-existing bug in the subarray rules.

  ...  Provided count of how many new SI modes have been generated since September.  

  ...  Continued review and updating of SACGS documentation (SACGS = SOT ACIS Command Generation System).