ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for May 2023

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 slides and presented ACIS status at the 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 MAY0823A 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

  ...  Command packets for the ACIS FSW patch H-J-K are in development. This patch load includes three new standard patches and an update to an existing patch, which fix bugs and improves the ACIS response to unexpected shutdowns and BEP crashes. 

  ...  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.

  ...  We continue to monitor threshold crossing rates. Threshold crossing rates continue to drop and a new set of TXing parameters were uploaded on April 4, 2023.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed the radiation environment, new ECS SI modes, and the status of the next ACIS FSW patch.

  ...  Released early version of ACIS bias map timing report for internal review.

  ...  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

  ...  Technical reviewer for Chandra cycle 25 high count rate proposals.

  ...  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

  ...  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

  ...  Updates to command generation procedures are underway, in response to changes in the MKI network and the interface to the ACIS EU.  Documentation reviewed and given a test run.  New interface has additional account setup requirements that may need individual debugging.

  ...  Tested updated CLD files for long 5- and 6-CCD ECS observations

  ...  Compiled and submitted ACIS team test plan for CXC DS10.12.  Started testing.

  ...  Corresponded with CXC USINT about remaining problematic ACIS configurations in cycle 24.

  ...  New MIT ACIS team member third week on-call was May 15-21.  Provided backup support.

  ...  Reviewed MAY1823A, MAY2223A command loads; MAY1823, MAY2223, JUN0523 final OR lists; MAY1823, MAY2223, JUN0523 preliminary schedules; and MAY2923, JUN0523 LTS OR lists.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.