ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for November 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.  Discussed products for release in December.

  ...  Preparing poster for Chandra science symposium, "Twenty Years of ACIS: Instrument Status and the Next Twenty Years"

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).

  ...  Prepared slides for and presented at November Chandra Quarterly review.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  Reviewed trends in engineering data for the past 60 days; no unexpected trends were seen.

  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the NOV0219B 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 more detailed document on instrument behavior when switching BEPs.  Discussed questions about language related to booting.

  ...  Participated in team review of ACIS Flight Software User's Guide.  Finished up sections on starting the software.

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.  Sent comments on the FOT SOP to the FOT.  Procedure tested on the ASVT.  Discussed inconsistency between SOT and FOT SOPs verification of 1STAT2ST (watchdog reboot flag).

2.3 Instrument science performance

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

  ...  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

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

  ...  Participated in planning telecon for next IACHEC meeting (April in Virginia).

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.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued to assign SI modes for remaining observations in cycle 21.  Interacting with USINT to finalize configurations and correct chip drop order errors.

  ...  Reviewed NOV0919A, NOV1119T, and NOV1119A command loads.  Reviewed NOV0919 and NOV2519 LTS OR lists, NOV0919 and NOV1819 preliminary schedules, and NOV0919, NOV1119 (x3), and NOV1819 final OR lists..

  ...  Built one new SI mode for cycle 21 observation.

  ...  Assigned 3 SI modes.  Dropped chips from 4 ObsIDs

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.