ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for October 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.  (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html).

  ...  Prepared materials for and presented at the October Chandra Quarterly review on ACIS status.

  ...  Reported on ACIS status at Chandra monthly management telecon

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 OCT0520A load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Continued on-going effort to debug Engineering Unit DPA Side B commanding of engineering video boards.


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.

  ...  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, indicating the end of solar minimum.

  ...  Continued work on developing and testing a QEMU ACIS processor emulator. On-going development involves:
  -- Implement reconfigurable RCTU FIFO size and timeout to better emulate LRCTU used with the Engineering Unit 
 -- Continued bug fixes 

  ...  Continued team review of ACIS Flight Software User's Guide using the new version B released in April.  Finished section on DEA housekeeping, managing bad pixel and column maps, and began with memory dumps.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Supported response and recovery to the HRC side-A electronics anomaly. Supported HRC briefings and CAP reviews.  Agreed to remove the requirement for HETG to be inserted during radiation belt passages.

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed raising the 1DEAMZT yellow and red high limits based on pre-flight thermal testing and specifying a new upper limit on focal plane temperature based on bakeout studies of anomalous annealing.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.  Hardware used is a legacy Solaris system with failing RAID storage.  Purchased and received new Linux replacement computer and storage.  Started duplicating and testing quick-look telemetry processing pipline.

  ...  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 cold ECS measurments, updates on contamination calibration, and temperature-dependent response.

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

  ...  Participated in planning for upcoming virtual IACHEC meeting in November, directed at a more general interest audience.  MIT members are providing Zoom hosting and technical support.


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.  Remotely checked on status.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Responded to final comments on a draft of a memo describing the 2019 observation of Sco X-1.

  ...  Reviewed joint XMM/Chandra observations for potential health and safety issues.

  ...  Began checking for problem chip drop configurations in cycle 22.

  ...  Reviewed Proposers Observatory Guide for cycle 23.  Provided improved wording and corrections.

  ...  Updates to SACGS documentation including a new troubleshooting page and more specifics on email notification after SI mode assignment.

  ...  Reviewed OCT0920A and OCT1220A command loads.  Reviewed OCT2620, OCT1920, and OCT1220 LTS OR lists; OCT1220, OCT0920, and OCT1320 preliminary schedules; and OCT1220, OCT0920 and OCT1320 final OR lists.

  ...  Assigned 13 SI modes.  Dropped chips from 10 ObsIDs.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.