ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for August 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

  ...  Started inventory of document storage area that is needed for a flight project.  Contains documentation from multiple missions including Chandra.  Separating documents necessary for future Chandra support (engineering drawings and documents) from administrative records that are no longer needed.

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

  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the AUG0723A 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

  ...  Products and procedures to uplink the ACIS FSW patch H-J-K completed.  Procedure and script approved by FDB August 17.  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 August 14.  The previous set of TXing parameters were uploaded on July 10, 2023.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed the status of the next ACIS FSW patch, 
focal plane temperatures during perigee and low input voltages during perigee.

  ...  After OS update, restarted CXC ACIS science telemetry monitoring.  Required reinstalling perl and packages.

  ...  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

  ...  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.

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops response discussion group.  Discussed correcting for sacrificial charge in Cas A, creating new RMFs for warm temperatures, running HETG observations at temperatures up to -105C, and CTI correction at high temperatures.

  ...  Participated in discussion with HETG scientists to set operational details on the new HETG focal plane temperature limit of -105C.


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

  ...  Working on a job posting for an ACIS operations specialist to take over on-duty time plus maintenance of ACIS command generation software.

  ...  Prepared for cycle 25 ACIS SI mode assignment.  Identified problem configurations that will require confirmation or reconfiguration by USINT.

  ...  Participated in discussion of proposed new OR list format and how it would interact with ACIS OR list review software.

  ...  Reviewed AUG1423A command load; AUG1423 final OR list; AUG1423 preliminary schedule; and AUG2823 LTS OR list.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.