TIDE Operations History - 1998

013/1998 01/13/98 PSI start. To run for a week. Turn off on 1/20. Loaded all patches associated with PSI. This completes the recovery from the Nov. 97 reset. Patches not needed before so were not loaded. Problems on start up, Keeper voltage at 40 V but current only 1.8mA on first two attempts. Got ignition on third try but had to wait in glow mode for ~36 sec. Also took TM hit in the third try. 020/1998 PSI off-no problem.
041/1998 02/10/98 13:13 PSI ignition. First try after 1 hr conditioning. Change level 0 autosensitivity threshold from 20 to 59. No change in other levels. Some problems with changing threshold. Have to load table through _.mic and then issue exe_ss_cmd for change to take place.
045/1998 02/14/98 PSI off.
045/1998 02/14/98 17:18 PSI on. Two attemps. First Vk=about 37V Vi=0- 1.8mA. Vn(28V)=about 150mA. In this mode for 9 major frames. Changed procedure to wait 25 sec. 2nd attemp ok. Came up slow but got good ignition within 3 MjF.
048/1998 02/17/98 19:29 PSI off
049/1998 02/18/98 05:32 Stop MCP voltages stepped to 1252V.
063/1998 03/04/98 Stop MCP voltages stepped to 1262V.
070/1998 03/11/98 13:16:43 PSI ignited. First try successful. Bias voltage ramp -10 to +8 V. Little change in anything except bias current. This went dramatically to 1.3V at +8V bias.
084/1998 03/25/98 11:35 PSI off.
084/1998 03/25/98 MCP voltage to 1271V.
099/1998 04/09/98 01:20 Between 01:19:58 and 01:20:07 UT, TIDE HV was turned off. The high voltages were ramped down from the SCT prior to the _hvmoff cmd. Prep for spin flip.
105/1998 04/15/98 20:28 As of this UT the high voltages are at the nominal settings for TIDE.
106/1998 04/16/98 MCP voltage to 1280
126/1998 05/06/98 4 unsuccessful tries to ignite PSI. All in high voltage, low current mode indicating no arc. First use of _ign4
127/1998 05/07/98 20:14:49 Anomalous reset during PSI cathode conditioning. Safed instrument and reset it.
128/1998 05/08/98 15:50 Loaded all TIDE software patches and reconfigured instrument. Radiation belt sweep tables loaded via SCT. 23:25 Ramped High voltage with no problem. Before HV ramp, opened PSI valve and closed it. Left PSI low voltage on to watch pressure decrease. Took about 1h 15 min before low pressure started to drop. This is ok given the present High pressure. At end of ramp issued a STID_PSIOFF. Noted that all PSI values went to 0.
129/1998 05/09/98 13:30 Call from POLAR POCC(Mark). Mark noted PSI values were unusual and that PSI was safed; usually armed. Ran a _vchk.prc and values changed to proper ones but went back to strange ones on turn off. We are running default software and not the patches so that these values will change with turnoff rather than being frozen as Mark and I both thought originally.
131/1998 05/11/98 00:30 Loaded PSI software patches. 3 unsucessful attempts on PSI. However, PSI came up in the glow mode, 40V about 280 mA. Conditionings at lv2 for 2hr, 15min, and 30 min.
132/1998 05/12/98 21:44 Used a 2.5 hr level 1 bake followed by a 10 min lv 2 bake and got PSI ignition through the glow mode. _ign4 modified prior to run in order to allow above change.
135/1998 05/15/98 MCP voltage to 1270 because radiation belts are active.
139/1998 05/19/98 13:42:14 Changed PSI bias voltage to +4 Volts. Sequence -4, 0, +2, +4 all in space of 6 minutes.
142/1998 05/22/98 12:47 PSI off. Nominal turnoff.
203/1998 07/22/98 16:30 Start of several attempts to start PSI. 5 attempts-no joy. All came up in high voltage 0 current mode.
205/1998 07/24/98 11:30 Start of 4 attempts to start PSI. No joy on any. no current (0-1.8 mA), approx 40 V on all tries.
207/1998 07/26/98 11:00 Start of two unsucessful and one successful attempt start PSI. First attempt after 2 hr lv1 and 1 hr lv 2 came up in glow mode. no joy after 25 sec wait. Second try after 10 min lv 2, up in glow mode but got ignition after turnoff proc started. Third try after 5 min wait then 10 min in lv2 came up in glow mode but were in hard wait(40 second limit) and got ignition after 3 major frames.
212/1998 07/31/98 14:00 Start of 5 attempts to restart PSI. PSI turned off from SCT for the first time around 1300UT. This is restart from that . Had 3 tries with PSI , all level 2 heats of relatively short duration and 25 sec waits, each time coming up in high voltage, no current mode. On 4th try, came up in same mode but FC went to hard wait and we got into a glow mode. on next attempt , we went with the hard wait , came up in glow mode and stayed there for about 42 sec before jumping over into proper mode. This is not the way we would like to see PSI ignite-too long in the glow mode, but we got there this time.
216/1998 08/4/98 10:10UT Start of window for PSI restart. Another SCT shut down of the PSI power supplies without turning PSI off. PSI ignited properly first time after a 15 min level 2 warmup period. Ran heater on level 1 with keeper on level2 after ignition for an hour. This to clean contaminants off the insert. Input current for the combined state was slightly less than the sum of the currents for the two states separately. Keeper voltage dropped to about 18V with the heater on and rose back to about 20 V after turning the heater back off.
217/1998 08/5/98 19:15 FOT team turned PSI off. The pressure fell to 0 in valve check made later.
230/1998 08/18/98 (Ck Date) MCP voltage back to 1280V(?) through the radiation belts.
240/1998 08/28/98 21:01 3 error flags set, noticed by FOT at AOS. Flags were in IMP at ROM, MLUT and Energy Sweep. Flags set not associated with commanding and all parameters appeared to be ok. Since it happened in the radiation belt, appeared to be a single event upset so the error flags were cleared with the CLR_ER_FLG command at 02:29:17UT. Instrument appeared to be ok after this.
241/1998 08/29/98 16:48 All 3 high voltages went to 0 but the supplies were left armed and enabled and the mirror and RPA were fully open so that this does not appear to be due to autosensitivity. Also 2 error flags in the IMP were set, one in the RAM and one in the MLUT. At 16:57 UT the standard commands for setting the start and stop MCPs to full voltage were issued from the SCT. As a result, the start and stop MCPs were on and at high voltage but the TOF was off. Issued the STID_HVMOFF command at 21:51:15UT. Error flags were left set for time being.
245/1998 09/2/98 13:22 3 commands to dump memory sent. Got a Command Executed error just after the exe_ss_cmd was sent but apparently, the memory was dumped as it should have been. It is possible (according to Ron Black) that the command error was set because the IMP has error flags set.
246/1998 09/3/98 21:30 TIDE reset, software patches loaded with the exception of the PSI patches, and dump of the IMP, DP and shared memory performed. Only questionable behavior is that TIDE did not show that it had gone into optional auto-sensitivity when commanded from the SCT to do so. This may be something related to the fact that the high voltage supplies are down and not enabled.
247/1998 09/3/98 19:10 Ramped the TIDE high voltage. No apparent problems and TIDE is back up and running.
264/1998 09/21/98 19:20 Ignited PSI. 1st attempt came up in g;low mode. 2nd attempt PSI came up in glow mode but shifted to good mode before the 25 s wait period expired.
266/1998 09/22/98 04:40 Re-ignited PSI. Came up first try with no problems.
268/1998 09/25/98 08:30 Re-ignited PSI. Took 7 attempts. The first 4 came up in the high voltage, zero current mode. The remaining 3 came up in glow mode. The next to the last mode came up in glow mode and converted to good mode but not in time for the automatic wait to see it. The last time, PSI came up in glow mode and stayed there for only one major frame. Level 2 heating was only for 5- 10 minutes. Did one level 1 heat for an hour just before the third try. After PSI on, did a memory dump, This memory dump to be compared to the first one which was without the PSI patches and without PSI being on, both of which are in this dump.
269/1998 09/26/98 23:46:40 Re-ignition of PSI. Got it first try. Swept bias voltage 0 to -10V to 0 to +7V to 0 then set to +4V. Two volt steps except near extremes where steps could be one volt because went up on even volts, down on odd volts.
271/1998 09/28/98 10:54:56 Re-ignition of PSI. Got it first try.
272/1998 09/29/98 07:30 Turned high voltage on TIDE off because had error flags set in the RAM and MLUT. Found later that TIDE was also in the high angular resolution mode. Left PSI on at this time. Apparently this is another SEU. 16:32:50 Turned PSI power supplies off. Left gas flowing. 20:35 Started a complete memory dump at this time. Got a CMD EXE error with the first group of memory dump commands. Apparently this did no haarm in that the memory dump proceeded as it normally does. 21:15:44 Did a reset on TIDE. Note that PSI was still on low voltage and the gas was flowing. No change in state of PSI during the reset. Turned PSI off after the reset. Then performed the normal TIDE recovery, software patches, including the PSI patches, a high voltage ramp, and TIDE setup. After the TIDE recorvery, restarted PSI. All this done in a 3 hour pass with a error on our part. Note that after a reset, we should execute a SEL_E_SWP 0 1 to load the energy sweep. Note also we used an abbreviated high voltage ramp, in which the MCPs were ramped in 2 steps instead of 3 and the TOF was ramped above 3000 by 2kv steps. Future ramps above 7kV should NOT use 2kV steps, 1kV might be better.
275/1998 10/02/98 23:06:17 Reignited PSI. Only one attempt necessary.
278/1998 10/05/98 22:23:23 PSI keeper turned off by the FOT. PSI low volatage turned off at 22:24:36 UT. Background decreased slightly after the keeper was turned off.
282/1998 10/09/98 TIDE high voltage turned off in preparation for spin flip. Gas valve opened to protect PSI cathode.
288/1998 10/15/98 Gas valve closed and TIDE high voltage ramped after spin flip and 3 day wait. Used abbreviated ramp except for 7KV and higher on the TOF.
294/1998 10/21/98 First day for using L=7 as boundary for radiation belts.
296/1998 10/23/98 Cleared TLM Que error flag that was set as a result of a glitch in the GTM of the spacecraft. No apparent problem with TIDE.
297/1998 10/24/98 19:49:40 Sent _hvmoff. At onset of pass at 19:10 UT TIDE HV was at 0 but the supplies were armed and enabled. The mirrors and RPA were fully opened. PSISquirt was on and PSI was off.
298/1998 10/25/98 21:16 Cycled PSI low voltage in attempt to reset the PSI Squirt status from on to off. It worked. Used psi_vchck.prc.
299/1998 10/26/98 ~19:00 Reset TIDE, reloaded patches, and ramped TIDE high voltage. This because of the problem on 10/24 above.
321/1998 11/17/98 13:00 Lowered HV to 500v on all 3 supplies via SCT at 1230UT. Sent _hvmoff at 13:00:58 UT. High voltage turned off in order to safe TIDE for Leonid showers.
323/1998 11/19/98 19:00 Ramped the TIDE high voltage back up. Used the revised ramp procedures and a new script with more steps in the TOF ramp from 4kV to 9kV. The extra steps are an attempt to avoid a ringing in the data as the voltage is stepped up, particularly at the higher voltages. It took an hour for the complete procedure, 40 minutes for the actual voltage ramp. A small amount of ringing may have occurred at the lower voltages but none at the higher steps.
325/1998 11/21/98 First day of using L=7 for radiation belt boundaries.
xxx/1998 11/98 First day for dropping the 1 minute cushion for rad. belt turnoffs. Turnons have been on the crossing time from the beginning.
335/1998 12/01/98 18:06 Changed the threshold levels for autosensitivity to 200k on the threshold 0 and 400kHz for threshold level 3 (tidatopstab4.mic).
336/1998 12/02/98 First day for using L=6 for rad. belt boundary on the nightside. This was done on only a few days in this RQL cycle.
346/1998 12/12/98 Radiation Belt L-Shell Cutoffs set to 7 (np-eq), 7 (eq-sp), 6 (sp-eq), 6 (eq-np).
350/1998 12/16/98 Starting wiht this day, all nightime radiation belt boundaries set at L=6. 02:10 Also the first mirror cal done in the dayside plasmasphere this day (starts about 02:10 UT).
351/1998 12/17/98 14:17 2nd mirror calibration done in the dayside plasmasphere pass (starts about 14:17 UT).
355/1998 12/21/98 17:30 Igniting PSI. 3 tries with short level 2 heating. Up in high voltage, practically 0 current(1.8mA). A 1 hr level 1 bake out followed by a couple of short heat ups. Then a 1 hour level 2 conditioning followed by several short bakeouts. Tried thermally cyclying the cathode a couple of times spread out through this pass, no luck.
356/1998 12/22/98 13:15 5 minute warmup, same mode as before. Tried a 2 hour level 1 bakeout. Same result as before.

Last Updated: September 2003