ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for January 2016

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).  Worked out the usual kinks after the year turn-over.

  ...  Finished updates of ACIS monitoring software on SAO real-time telemetry web pages.  Added improvements for error checking and fixed a bug.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

  ...  Participated in FDB review of EEPROM checksum command loads.  Provided additional information on procedure review and testing for FDB.  Will be run by CAP in February.  CAP is writing and has been reviewed by ACIS team.

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.

  ...  Reviewed JAN1116A load to confirm the commanding to upload optimal parameters to the TXINGS patch.  Successfully executed on January 11.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed EEPROM checksum CAP development, SOP development, bakeout study plans, and thermal issues.

  ...  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.  Abstract of study has been reviewed; full report expected in February.

  ...  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

  ...  ACIS memo listing calibration ObsIDs and observation characteristics (ACIS Memo #165) will no longer be updated.  Functionality is replaced by new web page (http://acis.mit.edu/asc/evt-page.html), which is more automated.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussion included contamination measurements and modeling, and thermal issues.

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

  ...  Royce Buehler has retired as of January 15.  He will continue his association with ACIS operations on a part-time basis.

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

  ...  Began training new ACIS operations team member John ZuHone to do OR list reviews, SI mode assignment and chip drops.

  ...  Fixed error in SACGS script that caused ACIS Tables to not get copied to monitoring web pages.

  ...  Continuing familiarization with SACGS operation and under-the-hood functioning.

  ...  Dropped chips for 16 observations, reviewed preliminary schedules and OR lists for JAN2516.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.