ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for June 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).

  ...  Analyzed new raw mode data frames and posted to http://space.mit.edu/home/fergason/acis/raw.html and https://space.mit.edu/home/fergason/acis/rawStats.html


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 JUN0523A 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 were built, tested on the EU and installed in the ODB. 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. 

  ...  Update to procedure for creating FSW patch command packets is underway.

  ...  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 new parameters were selected.  They will be uploaded in July.  The previous 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 and new txings parameters, status of CLD files for new ECS SI modes, and the status of the next ACIS FSW patch.

  ...  Reviewed and released new ACIS memo, "ACIS Bias Timing" (http://acisweb.mit.edu/pub/acis-bias-timing-v1.2.pdf), analyzing the timing of each step in bias creation for the full mission.

  ...  Fixed two bit errors during ObsID 27925 and provided replacement SSR dump file to DS.

  ...  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://acisweb.mit.edu/asc/evt-page.html), which provides the same information but is more automated.

  ...  Technical reviewer for HST joint observations.  On-call technical support during Chandra proposal review.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

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

  ...  Discussed previous work on CTI and sacrificial charge with CXC Cal.  May be relevant to using Cas A observations for gain monitoring.

  ...  Contributed to the IACHEC newsletter with a summary of Detectors and Backgrounds Working Group activities.

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.  Checked on both machines after COG reboot and Wayside power drop.

  ... Evaluated effect of COG updates at Wayside OCC

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Updates to command generation procedures completed, in response to changes in the MKI network and the interface to the ACIS EU.  New interface has additional account setup requirements that may need individual debugging.

  ...  Completed testing and and submitted ACIS team test report for CXC DS10.12. 

  ...  Participated in mission planning study on changes to the OR list format

  ...  New MIT ACIS team member third week on-call was June 1-June 4.  Provided backup support.

  ...  Reviewed JUN0523A command load; JUN1923 LTS OR list.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.