ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 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).

  ...  Finished work building new 5-chip CTI mode which runs S1-S5.  Commands built, reviewed, tested on the ACIS Engineering Unit, and released in the ACIS Tables.  This mode is now available to FOT mission planning to use when thermal conditions preclude a six-chip CTI run.

  ...  Installed updated ACIS monitoring software on SAO real-time telemetry web pages.  Fixes bug which prevented alert messages, fixed bug in the median filter that rejects garbled data, and now includes an alert for instances of the "hi-lo" anomaly.  Working on a more robust version of the startup script.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

  ...  Reviewed EEPROM checksum command loads created by FOT.  Decided to run these in a CAP, rather than an SOP.  In future, will put these commands into a SAR for use in the command load.  CAP is being developed.

  ...  Reviewed additional comments for a number of SOPs, which remind about setting the focal plane temperature and txings parameters when necessary.

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.

  ...  Examined recent TXINGs data and determined that the "optimal" parameters from 2012 are still "optimal".  Wrote, reviewed, and submitted SAR to FOT MP to re-load the optical parameters.  SAR was successfully executed on January 11.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed plans for txings patch parameters and new thermal models.

  ...  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.

2.5 Participate in Chandra activities

  ...  Supported ACIS participation in FOT anomaly simulation.


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 new QE files for CC mode observations.

  ...  Submitted abstract for SPIE meeting next summer, "Evolution of temperature-dependent charge transfer inefficiency correction for ACIS on the Chandra X-ray Observatory".

  ... Participated in planning telecon for next IACHEC meeting (March in Pune, India).  Discussed program and current registration status.
  
  ...  Co-author on "Summary of the 2015 IACHEC meeting", submitted to the arXiv (astro-ph/1512.08585).

  ...  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.  Performed monthly check of all ACIS hardware and software.  Updated acisCtl to most recent version.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued training in ACIS command generation and operations procedures including load reviews, SAR/SOP/CAP creation, and TST room maintenance.  Will take over some of Royce Buehler's tasks when he retires in January.  Continued reviewing list of Royce's tasks with ACIS personnel to find potential gaps.

  ...  Tracked down error in SACGS script that caused ACIS Tables to not get copied to monitoring web pages.  Fix is in the works.

  ...  Tracked down error in process which creates the lookup table for the SI mode finder web page.

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