ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for July 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.  Fixed leap year error in time calculations.  Updated monitoring web pages. (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html).

  ...  Retrieved updated versions of ACIS monitoring software for SAO real-time telemetry web pages.  Installed on one of the ACIS virtual machines (aciscdp-v) as a test (successful).  Remaining machines will be updated in the near future.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  1PIN1AT continues to shift between believable and open, but all else is nominal.
  
  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the JUL1116 load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Reviewed updated FOT procedure, switch_bepa_b.  Suggested minor changes.

  ...  Archeology of early mission timeline -- has the DEA side B ever been powered on in flight?  N,o it has not.  Early operations ran the abridged long form fuctional test which does not exercise DEA-B.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

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

  ...  TXING "optimal" parameters determined in 2012 need to be updated due to changing solar activity.  New command to update TXING parameters installed in ACIS tables.  Wrote and submitted a SAR to run the command.  Executed July 27 in the JUL2516 load.  Verified parameters have updated correctly.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed current instrument status, updates to TXING parameters, and DH heater status.

  ...  Confirmed good completion of final calibration observation required before turning off the detector housing heater.  Heater successfully  turned off in the JUL1816 load.  Episodes of higher focal plane temperatures should be less frequent.

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecons.  Discussed status ACE real-time data and our radiation shutdown decision process in the absence of ACE real-time data.

  ...  Presented tutorial on CCD operation and ACIS on-board data processing to ACIS operations team.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.  MIT telemetry pipeline processing machine died.  Successfully and quickly transfered to backup machine.  

  ...  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.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussed response to reduced cold ECS time in recent tgain epochs, new contamination data, and the calibration plan for AO-18.

  ...  Participated in separate discussion of tgain results.  Reviewed problematic results, confirmed a problem with processing rather than the data itself.  Processing bug found and fixed.

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

  ...  One conclusion of SPIE paper was that an update to the BI CCD CTI-temperature relationship would be easy to implement and provide some response improvement.  The precise values in the update are under development.

  ...  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 in the TST room at the OCC.  Received and distributed new sotmaxaf EHS password.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued review and updating of SACGS documentation (SACGS = SOT ACIS Command Generation System).  Major rewrite of OR list review documentation in response to multiple user questions.

  ...  Continuing familiarization with SACGS operation and under-the-hood functioning.  To-do list of planned updates distributed to operations team.

  ...  Reviewed JUL1816A command load.  Reviewed JUL2516 preliminary schedule and final OR list.  Reviewed AUG0116 Long Term Schedule OR list.

  ...  Dropped chips from three obsids.  Assigned two SI modes.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.