ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for February 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).

  ... Requested new raw mode frames.  They will collected in March.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

  ...  Developed CAP to run EEPROM checksum command loads in real-time.  Successfully executed on February 25.  On-board checksum matches expected value, so no EEPROM corruption has occurred.  Reviewed ATS commands which will eventually be put into the daily load on a monthly schedule.

  ...  Reviewed memo to closeout DEA anomaly report from 2005.

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 meetings.  Discussed EEPROM checksum CAP, 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 to be presented to ACIS team in March.

  ...  Attended briefings on SOT and FOT mission planning activities.

  ...  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

  ...  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 provides the same information but is more automated.

  ...  Provided plots of particle background spectrum and time-dependence to CXC Cal personnel.

  ...  Answered CXC Cal question about SI modes and optional CCDs.

  ...  Answered CXC Cal question about which ER obsid contain valid ACIS calibration source data.

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 IACHEC meeting in Pune, India.  Organized Detectors Working Group session.  Gave talk on ACIS temperature-dependent CTI correction evolution.
  
  ...  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.  Requested replacement of malfunctioning HEAD LAN machine.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

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

  ...  Began training new ACIS operations team member John ZuHone to build new SI modes including testing on the Engineering Unit, and use of the EHS system at the OCC.

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

  ...  Reviewed proposed changes for chip drop code.

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

  ...  Reviewed FEB0816A and FEB0816B loads.  Reviewed LTS OR list for FEB2216.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.

  ...  Assigned SI modes for test archive used in testing new OFLS.