ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for October 2022

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

  ...  Following IU reset on October 20 and safe mode on October 21, verified ACIS was safe, monitoring housekeeping data during recovery.  Ran a CAP to collect ECS data during recovery.

  ...  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 on ACIS status for November Chandra Quarterly Review.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  Engineering trending over the past 60 days is nominal.

  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the OCT1022A loads. Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Continued weekly physical audit of the ACIS Engineering Unit lab. 

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Continued work investigating FEP flight software bug discovered during ObsID 25140.  Wrote and tested biasphase3 patch to prevent problem.

  ...  ACIS flight software patch G-I-J (improved TXings) uploaded on August 11, 2022.  First new patch set since January 2020.  No issues to date.

  ...  Further documentation updates after the FSW patch GIJ uplink.

   ...  Assembled new flight software patch level HJK.  Completed standard testing and distributed review documentation.  Internal MIT reviews are underway.  Includes three standard patches.  fepbiasrec and biasphase3 address software anomaly reports that pointed to errors in FEP flight software, and mostfatal assists in preserving BEP register contents in the event of an unexpected hardware interrupt.

  ...  We continue to monitor threshold crossing rates. Threshold crossing rates have been decreasing, indicating the transition from solar minimum to solar maximum. The TXing revB parameters were updated on August 11, 2022 and September 12, 2022.

  ...  Continued work on QEMU ACIS emulator development.
	- continued looking at run-time modification of the "throttle" start-up parameter that changes the emulated CPU speed;


2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting. Discussed whether new txing parameters were needed (no), behavior of the new "-106C" setpoint, new ECS SI modes, and plans for the next three ACIS FSW patches.

  ...  Installed updates to science telemetry monitoring software running at SAO.

  ...  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

  ...  Corrected 2-bit corruption in ObsID 25805 bias maps.  Repaired EHS file made available to CXC.

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group. Discussed cold ECS time, gain calibration, contamination measurements, and -105C calibration observations.

  ...  Answered user questions on CTI and image shapes

  ...  Answered CXC SDS question about CIAO page description of FP temperature variations.  Wording was out-of-date.

  ... Participated in planning telecon for the next in-person IACHEC meeting in April.

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


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.  Restarted both EGSE machines routinely.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Checking cycle 24 long term schedule for configuration issues and chip drop assignment problems.

  ...  Worked on procedure for re-assigning large groups of SI modes as mission planning updates the "spectra_max_counts" parameter needed for FP temperature limit decisions.

  ...  Submitted ACIS test report for CXC DS10.11.1.

  ...  Built, tested, and installed new SI mode for calibration observation of GX 3+1.

  ...  Began work on new NIL event histogram modes to support HRC return-to science.  New modes will use fewer CCDs, to allow for TXings radiation monitoring while minimizing thermal impact on HRC. Working with mission planning on implementing the new NIL modes.

  ...  Began work on new ECS mode to complement the one in use for long measurements during shutdowns.

  ...  Reviewed OCT1022A command load; OCT1022(x2) final OR lists; OCT1022 (x2) preliminary schedules; and OCT2422, OCT1722 LTS OR lists.
 
  ...  Assigned 10 SI modes. Dropped chips from 4 ObsIDs

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.