ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for February 2020

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.  Added a fix for the 2020 leap year, update to temperature dependence, added binned CTI calculation (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 FEB1020A load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Executed a focal plane cooling test Feb 17.  Cooling curve looks unchanged.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  ACIS flight software patch G-H-I (improved buscrash and new deahktrip) uploaded on January 24, 2020.  First new patch set since June 2014.  No issues to date.

  ...  After successful FSW patch upload, completed final updates to anomaly quick-response pages and released new version of SOT SOP.

  ...  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.

  ...  Continued work on a major update to the ACIS FSW User's Guide review to edit/augment with clearer text and fill in missing sections, information, and caveats.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  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.


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 lack of cold ECS data in the previous epoch and upcoming IACHEC meeting (now postponed).

  ...  Answered CXC Cal scientist questions about issue in time-dependent gain fitting and QEU.

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

  ...  Participated in discussion of planned April IACHEC meeting.  (In March this meeting was postponed to September).


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.  Setup of Virtual Network Computer (VNC) system is nearing completion.  Will allow for remote viewing and control of the EGSE screens.

  ...  Started the process of getting a Jira account at the OCC which allows more access from home.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Reviewed release notes for new CXCDS 10.8.3.  No need for ACIS testing.

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

  ... Discussed raw mode compression with ACIS ops.

  ...  Reviewed FEB1020A command load.  Reviewed FEB2420 LTS OR list, FEB1020 and FEB1720 preliminary schedules, and FEB1020(x2) and FEB1720 final OR lists.

  ...  Dropped chips from 4 ObsIDs.  Assigned 11 SI modes.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.