ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 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.  New products will be ready for testing in January.

  ...  Presented poster at 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).


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 DEC0919A load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Resolved hardware problems with the ACIS Engineering Unit preventing SI mode testing.  

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.  Products and procedures presented to and approved by FDB.  Planning for upload in January.

  ...  In response to FSW User's Guide review, planning new version, in a modern format, that makes corrections and is better matched to current operating procedures rather than what was imagined in the 90s.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed recent 1SSMYT yellow high violation, and progress toward ACIS FSW patch upload.

  ...  Produced plots of 1SSMYT and 1SSPYT pre-launch to support discussion of raising limits.

  ...  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

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussed status of the gain droop correction and testing of the next contamination CALDB update.

  ...  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.  Investigated issues with local interaction.  Temporary fix is to log off and on.

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.

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

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.