New Horizons: Post-Launch Chekout Raw Student Dust Counter (SDC) Data

Status: Locally Archived

This dataset contains raw data leading up to and including the post-launch checkout for the Student Dust Counter (SDC) instrument of the New Horizons mission. The data were collected from 19 Jan 2006 through 01 Jan 2007.

The entire data set including catalog, document, index, and supporting files can be downloaded here:

• nhlasd_1001.tar (153 MB tar file) [MD5 checksum for the tar file]

An overview of the volume contents is provided in the aareadme.txt file.

Catalog Files

Catalog files contain the overview information and parameters used in loading the PDS central catalog, specifically, or for developing other interfaces to the data outside of PDS. The information they contain, particularly in their descriptive text fields, should be clear, complete, and understandable to a research user who is not necessarily a mission or instrument specialist.

These files are located in the catalog/ directory. The directory contents are described by the catinfo.txt file.

• New Horizons mission file
• New Horizons Spacecraft instrument host file
• SDC instrument file
• Data Set description file
• Target catalog files contain very brief definitions of the various TARGET_NAME values found in the PDS labels for the data:
  • Dust
• References file
• Personnel file

Documentation Files

In addition to the small text files located throughout the volume to describe directory contents, some specific documents are provided to assist with understanding the data and processing involved. These files are located in the document/ directory. The directory contents are described by the docinfo.txt file.

Additional explanatory material about the observations has been provided in several separate documents:

• The SDC Instrument is described by this paper published in Space Science Reviews: (ASCII and graphics, PDF, PDS label).
• The SDC Instrument Kernel also provides a description of this detector: (ASCII).
• SOC-to-Instrument Pipeline Interface Control Document specifies the interfaces between the New Horizons Science Operations Center (SOC) and the instrument pipeline, which processes raw and reduced data. (ASCII and graphics, PDF, Word, PDS label).
• The New Horizons Boresighted Instrument Fields-of-View: (PNG, PDS label).
• The New Horizons Mission Elapsed Time (MET) to UTC conversion: (ASCII table, PDS label).
• SDC On/Off times: (ASCII table, PDS label).
• The New Horizons Trajectory: (ASCII table, PDS label).
• The New Horizons Quaternion Description: (ASCII table, PDS label).
• The New Horizons Payload is described by this paper published in Space Science Reviews: (ASCII and graphics, PDF, Word, PDS label).
• The samples/ directory provides files that have, in ASCII form, a subset of the contents of a sampling of products in the data/ directory. A generalized PDS label for the ASCII samples is included. The sampinfo.txt file describes the contents of this directory.

Calibration Files

The calib/ directory contains the files used to reduce and calibrate the raw data. The directory contents are described by the calinfo.txt file.

• sdc_cal_matrix.fit provides the calibration matrix (temperatures, channels, and polynomials for the DN-to-charge conversion) for the dust counter (PDS label).

Data Files

The data/ directory contains raw SDC data stored as FITS files and grouped into daily directories. Each FITS file includes a binary table of dust data and several extensions that provide housekeeping information. The data format is described in the SOC-to-Instrument Pipeline Interface Control Document. Each data file has a detached PDS label (*.lbl).

Index Files

The index/ directory contains the required PDS index into the files in the data directory, as well as the checksum file.

• indxinfo.txt describes the directory contents.
• index.tab is a CSV table that identifies the location of each data file in this data set (PDS label).
• checksum.tab is a flat table of MD5 checksums for each file in the official archive volume except for itself and its PDS label.