ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for July 2019

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs.

  ...  Worked on new CTI correction coefficients for FI temperature dependent CTI correction.

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.  Reviewed trends in engineering data for the past 70 days; no unexpected trends were seen.

  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the JUL0719 load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Attempt at training new ACIS ops hire on the ACIS Engineering Unit foiled by issues with the EU.  Replaced bad L-RCTU interface.

  ...  SOP to switch between DEA-A and DEA-B (SOP_ACIS_SWITCH_DEAA_B) approved by FDB.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

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

  ...  We continue to monitor threshold crossing rates.  The current TXINGS parameters were last updated on July 28, 2016.  Threshold crossing rates may have flattened out and started decreasing recently, potentially indicating the end of solar minimum.

  ...  Continuing forward with ACIS patch level G-H-I.  This patch makes two changes to the current F-G-H patches -- updates buscrash2 patch to force end of science run following SCS107, and adds a new deahktrip patch to respond to "red alert" DPA component temperatures.  Command packets built and started sanity checking on the ACIS engineering unit.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed plans for raising thermal limits and worries about thermal cycling of components.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.

  ...  Updated guide to quick-look processing for changes due to the Wayside transition.

  ...  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.

  ...  Answered user question about transient source seen on S4.  Based on timing and spatial distribution of events, advised it was likely due to streak events and recommended the CIAO destreak tool which removed the events in question.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussed status of time and temperature dependent CTI correction, central node gain droop, and contamination.

  ...  Continued to maintain ACIS calibration database of ground and flight data products.

  ...  Worked with CXC V&V to investigate a puported anomaly in ObsID 22277.  Problem was not in the data, which was normal, but in the plots used by V&V to examine the data.


4.  OCC Support

4.1 Use of MIT/ACIS EGSE at OCC

  ...  Continued support and maintenance of ACIS EGSE software and hardware at the Wayside OCC.  Performed monthly check of all ACIS hardware and software at the OCC.  Continued to work on refinements to the security configuration of MIT EGSE.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Reviewed JUL1119A and JUL1519A command loads.  Reviewed JUL1519 (twice) and JUL2219 preliminary schedules.  Reviewed JUL1519, JUL1119, JUL2219 final OR lists.  Reviewed JUL2219 and JUL2919 LTS OR lists.

  ...  Assigned 2 SI modes.  Dropped chips from 3 ObsID.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.