ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for May 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).


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  A review of the past 60 days of engineering data indicates no abnormal trends.
  
  ...  ATS commands which run EEPROM checksum commands were run in the MAY0216 load.  Confirmed commands ran as expected, that the checksum matched, and that the EEPROM contents were not dumped.  Will continue to run monthly in the load.  Automated checks of the results are now in place.

  ...  Reviewed updated versions of "atomic" ACIS SOT SOP (deaa_on, deaa_off, etc.).  Suggested changes to wording about noisy current values and table descriptions of software housekeeping verifiers.

  ...  Continued editing new SOT SOP, switch_bepb_a, and updated switch_bepa_b.  Both have been reviewed by the ACIS instrument team and released to the FOT for development.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Flight software patch F-G-H (improved buscrash2) uploaded in June 2014.

  ...  Examined recent TXINGs data and determined that the "optimal" parameters determined in 2012 need to be updated, as described in the original memo (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/acis-txings-parms-v1.1.pdf).  New parameters selected and reviewed.  New command to update parameters on-board built and tested on the Engineering Unit.  Will be installed in the ACIS tables and run via a SAR in the daily load in the future, probably in July.

  ...  Documenting procedures for creating and testing ACIS flight software patches.  Reviewed internally.  New memo released on June 6 (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/acis-patching-v1.0.pdf)

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed raising 1DPAMZT planning and yellow high limits.  Would require raising two BEP science telemetry limits.  Discussed TXINGs parameter update and bakeout studies.

  ...  Reviewed materials from MIT materials science graduate student examining the ACIS reverse annealing experience and confirming our qualitative explanation with quantitative analysis.  Will meet in June to discuss further and make plans to submit to a journal.

  ...  Reviewed web pages on ACIS operations response to SCS-107, and thermal issues with long CTI observations.

  ...  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 for Flight Director Certification on May 24.  Anomaly was not ACIS related, confirmed ACIS status and safety.

  ...  Participated in FOT discussion of Hitomi failure and any relevance to Chandra operations.


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.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussion included contamination measurements and reduced cold ECS data in most recent tgain epochs.  Splinter meeting was called to examine potential solutions.  A combination of relaxing the temperature filter and summing two epochs was decided upon.  Planned turn-off of the ACIS Detector Housing heater will also help increase the amount of cold data.

  ...  Provided original ACIS Optical Blocking Filter specifications (36-10115 and 36-10116) from 1996 to ACIS SOT, for use in potential bakeout studies.

  ...  Working on paper for SPIE meeting in June, "Evolution of temperature-dependent charge transfer inefficiency correction for ACIS on the Chandra X-ray Observatory".

  ...  Answered CXC SDS question on ACIS event splitting and grading and how it is implemented in MARX.

  ...  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 and additional check after update of COG.  

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued review and updating of SACGS documentation (SACGS = SOT ACIS Command Generation System).  Updated documentation for installing ACIS tables at the OCC.

  ...  Continuing familiarization with SACGS operation and under-the-hood functioning.  Discussion about whether to check for bad pitch 5-chip contingency modes earlier in the review process.  Will involve updates to or2simodes.  Answered question about script that finds Obsids with unassigned SI mode.

  ...  Reviewed MAY1616A command load.  Reviewed MAY2316 preliminary schedule and final OR list.  Reviewed MAY3016 Long Term Schedule OR list.

  ...  Dropped chips from four obsids.  Assisted team member with installing new ACIS tables at the OCC.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.

  ...  Created plan for testing ASCDS 10.5 by the ACIS team, including SACGS, our load review script, and Peter Ford's processing at MIT.  Set up test environment and test archive access and started testing.  Test completed in June.