ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 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).

  ...  Start of porting remaining Unix-based monitoring scripts to Linux, in conjunction with the Unix->Linux switch of the ACIS quick-look processing pipeline.


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 DEC1420B load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

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 have flattened out and started decreasing, indicating the end of solar minimum.  The trigger level may need to be lower in the next year.

  ...  Continued work on developing and testing a QEMU ACIS processor emulator. 
On-going QEMU ACIS emulator development, involving:
 -- Setup buildbot continuous integration system for lightweight automated builds
 -- Started programmer manual reference process (man pages)
 -- Continued bug fixes
 
  ...  Continued team review of ACIS Flight Software User's Guide using the new version B released in April.  Completed section on calling BEP and FEP subroutines and the radiation monitor flag (not related to the txings flight software patch and not used in practice).

  ...  In response to FSW UG review, created draft anomaly response page for the case in which the ACIS radiation monitor flag was asserted anomalously.  This kind of anomaly has not occurred and is not expected to, but in the unlikely event it did occur, would be diagnosed much quicker with basic information already in place.  (This radiation monitor flag is entirely different from the TXINGS patch and is not used in current operations at all.)

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed the QEMU ACIS software simulator, predictions for ACIS focal plane temperature during the 2023 perigee minima, and setting a new focal plane temperature upper limit for mission planning.

  ...  Participated in SOT radiation working group telecon.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.  Final testing of pipeline on 64-bit Linux.  Pipeline running in parallel on old and new hardware for comparison.

  ...  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 new PCA analysis of time-dependent gain and how it can help make use of the remaining ECS data and new Cas A measurements.

  ...  Answered user question on the calibration of the framestore cover, whether it is opaque to X-rays (yes) and how many rows are covered (depends who you ask and how you measure it).

  ...  Answered SDS question on the meaning of the values in the CTI CALDB files.

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

  ...  Participated post-mortem telecon on the November virtual IACHEC meeting.  Generally a success!


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

  ...  Reviewed configuration of all currently scheduled observations and checked for missing SI modes.

  ...  Worked with USINT in determining a good order to drop chips for I-array observations

  ...  Reviewed JAN1821 updated LTS OR list.

  ...  Assigned 227 SI modes.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.