ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for July 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).


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 JUL1023A 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.  Performed a required power cycle.  Improved the startup sequence on the linked computer.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Products and procedures to uplink the ACIS FSW patch H-J-K written and under review.  Patchload and testing details presented to the Chandra FSW working group.  Uplink is scheduled for September. 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 new parameters were uploaded July 10.  The previous set of TXing parameters were uploaded on April 4, 2023.

  ...  In anticipation of further decreases in the threshold crossing rate, created, tested, and installed in the ODB eight new txing parameter commands.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed the status of the next ACIS FSW patch, new ECS SI modes, and options for new modes to run alongside HRC which would telemeter txings data.

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

  ...  Reconfigured MIT PMON monitoring during SAO firewall upgrade.  Worked additional monitoring issues arising from SAO network problems.

  ...  After OS update, worked to get CXC ACIS science telemetry monitoring restarted.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and maintained web interface to ACIS real-time data. 

  ...  Upgraded OS on computers supporting MIT telemetry processing and EU interface to improve network security.

  ...  Continued to publish the "annotated DOT" timeline reports.

  ...  Removed all critical MIT ACIS EGSE operations from Solaris system.

3.  CXC Support

3.1 Provide user support

  ...  Discussion with USINT about ACIS energy filters.  Discussion with USINT and CDO about CPS documentation causing observers to mis-configure some ACIS observations.

  ...  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.

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

  ...  Discovered duplicated command sequence ID numbers in the ACIS command list.  Fixed the ID pools and re-assigned SI mode IDs to remove the duplication.  Problem traced to instructions used for building patch command packets, which made assumptions about the user's initial setup.  Documentation will be improved.

  ...  Diagnosed problem with ACIS ops OR list review software.  User setup error.

  ...  Reviewed JUL1723A command load; JUL1023, JUL1723 final OR lists; JUL1023, JUL1723 preliminary schedules; and JUL2423 (x2), JUL3123 (x2) LTS OR lists.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.