ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for August 2024


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 AUG0524A 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.  A portion of the building HVAC failed on August 2 during a period of high temperature weather. The EU was manually shutdown proactively to prevent overheating of the electronics.  The EU was powered-up and passed regression testing after the exterior weather conditions improved.  HVAC repairs were completed August 15.  Weekly audits were otherwise nominal. 

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  ACIS flight software patch H-J-K uploaded on September 19, 2023.  First new patch set since August 2022.  No issues to date.

  ...  Continued development of diagnostic BEP/FEP memory dump procedures.  Updated version of memo on "Preventing FEP Firmware Deadlock" released. (https://acisweb.mit.edu/pub/fepdeadlock-v1.1.pdf)  Includes a recommended update for the DEA/FEP diagnostic SOP that is simpler than the one suggested in v1.0.

  ...  Updated memo on Engineering Unit regression testing. (https://acisweb.mit.edu/pub/acis-regression-v1.2.pdf)

  ...  We continue to monitor threshold crossing rates which have recently flattened out. The current set of TXing parameters were uploaded on May 7, 2024.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed instrument status, CCD temperatures during perigee, gain changes due to solar cycle, and recent memo on FEP memory dumps.

  ...  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 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

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops response discussion group.  Discussed gain issues in recent deep galaxy cluster observations.

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

  ...  Acting as editor for IACHEC 2024 meeting report.  Compiling working group chair responses.

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

  ...  Finished work with USINT on remaining problematic ACIS configurations in cycle 25. Discussion between USINT and ACIS team converged on a plan for observations of the Crab which satisfy science needs and retain TXings sensitivity. Built and tested new SI mode; distributed and installed updated ACIS tables in the ODB at Wayside.

  ...  Started planning for cycle 26 global SI mode assignment.

  ...  Circulated a draft of the ACIS team test plan for CXC DS10.13.

  ...  Reviewed AUG0524A, AUG0524B, AUG2924A, and SEP0224A command loads; AUG0524 post-final and AUG2924 final OR lists; AUG0524 revised and AUG2924 preliminary schedules; AUG0524 and AUG1224 updated LTS OR lists.
 
  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.