Mars Pathfinder ASI/MET Archive CD-ROM

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. CD-ROM Format
  3. File Formats
  4. Data Calibration
  5. Data Display
  6. CD-ROM Contents
  7. Whom to Contact for Information
  8. Cognizant Persons & Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

This CD-ROM contains on a single volume all of the raw, calibrated, and derived science and housekeeping data records collected by the Atmospheric Structure Instrument and Meteorology Package (ASI/MET) mounted on the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, along with documentation that describes the data. The data were collected during both the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) and Surface phases of the mission. (For a detailed description of the mission phases of the Mars Pathfinder mission, please see the MISSION.HTM file. For purposes of distinguishing between ASI/MET data collected during EDL and data collected after the landing, the 'Surface phase' also includes the extended mission.)

The data are divided up into four separate data sets. For each data set, there is an accompanying data set description file, which provides details on the structure and processing history of the data, and any other information you may need to know to use the data. The data set description files are located in plain ASCII form in the CATALOG directory, and in HTML form in the DOCUMENT directory of this CD. Please read these files before attempting to use the data. The data sets and the names of their respective data set description files are shown below:

MPFL-M-ASIMET-2/3-EDR/RDR-EDL-V1.0
This data set contains the raw and calibrated ASI/MET data collected during the EDL phase of the mission. These data were collected by accelerometers, temperature sensors, a pressure sensor, and a wind sensor. EDLER_DS.HTM
 
MPFL-M-ASIMET-4-DDR-EDL-V1.0
This data set contains temperature, pressure, and density profiles derived from the data in the first data set. EDLDDRDS.HTM
 
MPFL-M-ASIMET-2-EDR-SURF-V1.0
This data set contains the raw MET data collected during the Surface phase of the mission. These data were acquired by temperature sensors, a pressure sensor, and a wind sensor. SRFEDRDS.HTM
 
MPFL-M-ASIMET-3-RDR-SURF-V1.0
This data set contains the calibrated versions of the data in the third data set. SRFRDRDS.HTM

The data products on this CD are the original products released by the Mars Pathfinder project. They have been converted from BINARY to ASCII, and the calibrated data have been converted from raw voltage counts to engineering units such as temperature, pressure, and acceleration. Each data file has a detached PDS label that describes the file structure and instrument parameters used for the data. Derivation of the temperature, pressure, and density profiles is described in the EDLDDRDS.CAT file. Supporting documentation and label files conform to the Planetary Data System (PDS) Standards, Version 3.2, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) document number D-7669.

2. CD-ROM Format

This CD-ROM has been formatted so that a variety of computer systems (e.g., PC, Macintosh, and Sun) may access the data. Specifically, it is formatted according to the ISO-9660 level 1 Interchange Standard. For further information, refer to the ISO-9660 Standard Document: RF# ISO 9660-1988, April 15, 1988.

This CD-ROM does not contain any Extended Attribute Records (XARs). Thus, VAX/VMS users on older platforms may have some problems accessing files on the volume.

Note that some problems have been discovered in reading some CDs on UNIX platforms running the Solaris 2.6 operating system. This problem was solved on our systems by adding the following lines to the /etc/system file and rebooting: 

  * Next entries are to enable reading PDS CD-ROMs with "Record" entries
  set hsfs:ide_prohibited = 0xe6
  set hsfs:hde_prohibited = 0xe6
You might also try installing patch 105486-04 to correct this problem. It is a replacement HSFS driver and among the bugs fixed are: 

4141713 system crashes when reading from ISO9660 Joliet cdrom
4101516 allow reading of non-standard ISO-9660 (unsorted dirs) by default
4101513 fail to find certain filenames on Rock Ridge CDs
4079732 problem reading ISO-9660 CDs where directory entries are not ordered
If you continue to have problems, please contact the PDS Operator. (Contact info is provided below in section 7.)

3. File Formats

All of the data files on this CD-ROM are ASCII tabular files (file extension ".TAB") with detached PDS labels. The label files have the same name as the data files they describe, with the extension .LBL. For example, the file PKT_HDRS.TAB is accompanied by the detached label file PKT_HDRS.LBL in the same directory.

Tabular files are formatted so that they may be read directly into many database management systems (DBMS) or spreadsheet programs on various computers. In general, all fields in tables are fixed width and are separated by commas, with character fields enclosed in double quotation marks ("). Character fields are left justified, and numeric fields are right justified. The "start byte" and "bytes" values listed in a PDS label do not include the commas between fields or the quotation marks surrounding character fields. The records are of fixed length, and the last two bytes of each record contain the ASCII carriage return and line feed characters. This allows a table to be treated as a fixed length record file on computers that support this file type and as a normal text file on other computers.

The tables containing the raw and calibrated MET/Surface data were constructed slightly differently in an attempt to keep the format as similar as possible to that required for pre-existing software programs. The main difference is that the fields in these data files are not comma separated. However, the positions of the fields are fixed as in a normal PDS table, and the positions are described by the PDS labels. The files also contain a single header record which differs in format from the data records. The header records are padded with spaces to be the same length as the data records, so that the tables have a FIXED_LENGTH record format. All of the values in these tables are numeric.

PDS labels are object-oriented. The object to which the label refers (e.g., IMAGE, TABLE, etc.) is denoted by a statement of the form:

^object = location
in which the carat character ('^', also called a pointer in this context) indicates that the object starts at the given location. For an object in the same file as the label, the location is an integer representing the starting record number of the object (the first record in the file is record 1). For an object located outside the label file, the location denotes the name of the file containing the object, along with the starting record or byte number. For example:

^DATA_TABLE = ("SE0678S.TAB",2)
indicates that the DATA_TABLE object begins at record 2 of the file SE0678S.TAB, in the same directory as the detached label file. Below is a list of the possible formats that use the ^object keyword.

^object = n
^object = n <BYTES>
^object = "filename.ext"
^object = ("filename.ext",n)
^object = ("filename.ext",n <BYTES>)
where:

n starting record or byte number of the object, counting from beginning of the file (record 1, byte 1); default is record number.
<BYTES> indicates that number given is in units of bytes.
filename upper-case file name.
ext upper-case file extension.

All detached label and document files (with the exception of PDF formatted files) are stream format files, with a carriage return (ASCII 13) and a line feed character (ASCII 10) at the end of each record. This allows the files to be read by the MacOS, DOS, UNIX, and VMS operating systems. The PDF documentation files are in the binary Adobe Portable Document Format. These files can be read with the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available from "http://www.adobe.com/". (If this URL has expired, contact the PDS Operator for more information. Contact information for the PDS is shown in section 7.)

4. Data Calibration

The methods used to calibrate the EDL and Surface data are described in the ASMTINST.CAT file located in the CATALOG directory on this CD, and in the ACCDTCAL and ACCHKCAL files located in the DOCUMENT directory. Some of the specific algorithms used can be seen in the EDLSOFT and METSOFT files in the same directory.

5. Data Display

The PDS provides software for displaying PDS formatted images and tables on a variety of computer platforms. The application program for displaying these data is called NASAView, which has versions for SUN, Macintosh, and PC platforms.

Some earlier versions of NASAView may not be able to display tables. Versions 1.2.b and later have been tested and are able to display these data.

It is the intention of PDS to distribute NASAView through its World Wide Web and FTP sites. Consult the PDS WWW site for the status of NASAView in terms of its capabilities and availability. The address for the PDS NASAView web site is:

http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/license.html

(Complete contact information for the PDS is available below in section 7.)

6. CD-ROM Contents

Files on this CD-ROM are organized into a series of subdirectories below the top-level directory. The following table shows the structure and content of these directories. In the table, directory names are enclosed in square brackets ([]). 

  FILE                    CONTENTS

  Top-level directory
   |
   |- AAREADME.TXT        The file you are now reading.
   |- AAREADME.HTM        HTML version of the AAREADME.TXT file.
   |- AAREADME.LBL        PDS label describing the AAREADME.HTM file.
   |- ERRATA.TXT          Description of anomalies present on the
   |                      preliminary version of this CD-ROM.
   |- VOLDESC.CAT         Description of the contents of this CD-ROM
   |                      volume in machine readable format.
   |
   |- [CATALOG]           The CATALOG directory contains information about the
   |   |                  Mars Pathfinder mission, spacecraft, instruments,
   |   |                  data, personnel, and references.  The files are in
   |   |                  plain ASCII text, formatted as PDS catalog objects
   |   |                  for inclusion in the PDS data set catalog.  Most of
   |   |                  these files are also included in the DOCUMENT
   |   |                  directory as HTML formatted files, which some users
   |   |                  may find easier to read.
   |   |
   |   |- CATINFO.TXT     Detailed description of the files in the CATALOG
   |   |                  directory.
   |   |- ASMTINST.CAT    Description of the ASI/MET instrument.
   |   |- EDLDDRDS.CAT    ASI/MET EDL derived profile data set description.
   |   |- EDLER_DS.CAT    ASI/MET EDL raw and calibrated data set description.
   |   |- INSTHOST.CAT    Mars Pathfinder Lander description.
   |   |- MISSION.CAT     Mars Pathfinder mission description.
   |   |- PERSON.CAT      Mars Pathfinder ASI/MET personnel.
   |   |- REF.CAT         Mars Pathfinder-related references.
   |   |- SRFEDRDS.CAT    MET Surface EDR data set description.
   |   |- SRFRDRDS.CAT    MET Surface RDR data set description.
   |   |- WINDINST.CAT    IMP Windsock instrument description.
   |
   |- [DOCUMENT]          The DOCUMENT directory contains documentation
   |   |                  crucial to the understanding of the data on this
   |   |                  CD, as well as ancillary information which may be
   |   |                  of additional interest.  Some of the documentation
   |   |                  duplicates files found in the CATALOG directory, but
   |   |                  which is here re-formatted as HTML for ease of use.
   |   |
   |   |- DOCINFO.TXT     Detailed description of the files in the DOCUMENT
   |   |                  directory.
   |   |- ACCDTCAL.*      ASI/MET Accelerometer Data Conversion Expressions.
   |   |- ACCHKCAL.*      ASI/MET Accelerometer Housekeeping Conversions.
   |   |- AIP_CONV.*      Aeroshell Instrumentation Package Data
   |   |                  Conversion Expressions.
   |   |- ASMTINST.*      ASI/MET instrument description.
   |   |- CONTACTS.*      Contact information for MPF project personnel.
   |   |- EDLDDRDS.*      ASI/MET EDL derived profile data set description.
   |   |- EDLER_DS.*      ASI/MET EDL raw and calibrated data set description.
   |   |- EDLNOMSQ.*      ASI/MET EDL Nominal Sequences.
   |   |- EDLSOFT(1,2).*  EDL data calibration code.
   |   |- EDLTELEM.*      EDL Packet Telemetry Format description.
   |   |- INSTHOST.*      Mars Pathfinder Lander description.
   |   |- KEYWORDS.*      Definitions of keywords used in ASI/MET labels and tables.
   |   |- METDEFS.*       MET Experiment Command and Telemetry Definitions.
   |   |- METSOFT.*       MET data calibration code.
   |   |- MISSION.*       Mars Pathfinder mission description.
   |   |- REF.*           Mars Pathfinder-related References.
   |   |- SRFEDRDS.*      MET Surface EDR data set description.
   |   |- SRFRDRDS.*      MET Surface RDR data set description.
   |   |- WINDINS*.*      IMP Windsock instrument description.
   |   |- [IMAGES]        Directory containing images used in documents.
   |
   |- [INDEX]             The INDEX directory contains volume index tables
   |   |                  and other tables containing ancillary information.
   |   |                  The volume index tables provide the location and
   |   |                  file name of every data file on the CD.  Some of
   |   |                  them also provide additional parameters used to
   |   |                  further describe the data.
   |   |
   |   |- INDXINFO.TXT    Detailed description of the files in the INDEX directory.
   |   |- ED_INDEX.LBL    PDS label for ED_INDEX.TAB.
   |   |- ED_INDEX.TAB    Volume index table for the EDL derived data.
   |   |- EERINDEX.LBL    PDS label for EERINDEX.TAB.
   |   |- EERINDEX.TAB    Volume index table for the EDL raw and calibrated data.
   |   |- PKT_HDRS.LBL    PDS label for PKT_HDRS.TAB.
   |   |- PKT_HDRS.TAB    Table of raw packet headers for MET Surface EDRs.
   |   |- SE_INDEX.LBL    PDS label for SE_INDEX.TAB.
   |   |- SE_INDEX.TAB    Volume index table for the Surface raw data.
   |   |- SES_TIME.LBL    PDS label for SES_TIME.TAB.
   |   |- SES_TIME.TAB    Table of MET Surface data acquisition session
   |   |                  numbers and their corresponding spacecraft clock
   |   |                  and local time start and stop values.
   |   |- SR_INDEX.LBL    PDS label for SR_INDEX.TAB.
   |   |- SR_INDEX.TAB    Volume index table for the Surface calibrated data.
   |
   |- [EDL_DDR]           The EDL_DDR directory contains pressure, density,
   |                      and temperature profiles derived from the ASI/MET
   |                      data collected during the EDL phase of the mission.
   |
   |- [EDL_ERDR]          The EDL_ERDR directory contains raw and calibrated
   |                      ASI/MET data collected during the EDL phase of the
   |                      mission.
   |
   |- [SURF_EDR]          The SURF_EDR directory contains raw MET data
   |   |                  collected during the SURFACE phase of the mission.
   |   |
   |   |- [HKPDATA]       This directory contains the raw housekeeping data.
   |   |   |
   |   |   |- [SE00XXH]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |   |   |          0000 through 0099.
   |   |   |   |
   |   |   |   |- SE0039H.LBL File containing PDS label describing SE0039H.TAB.
   |   |   |   |- SE0039H.TAB File containing session 39 raw housekeeping data.
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |- [SE14XXH]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |                  1400 through 1499.
   |   |
   |   |- [SCIDATA]       This directory contains raw science data.
   |   |   |
   |   |   |- [SE00XXS]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |   |   |          0000 through 0099.
   |   |   |   |
   |   |   |   |- SE0039S.LBL File containing PDS label describing SE0039S.TAB.
   |   |   |   |- SE0039S.TAB File containing session 39 raw science data.
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |- [SE14XXS]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |                  1400 through 1499.
   |
   |
   |- [SURF_RDR]          The SURF_RDR directory contains calibrated MET data
   |   |                  collected during the SURFACE phase of the mission.
   |   |
   |   |- [HKPDATA]       This directory contains the calibrated
   |   |   |              housekeeping data.
   |   |   |
   |   |   |- [SR00XXH]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |   |   |          0000 through 0099.
   |   |   |   |
   |   |   |   |- SR0039H.LBL File containing PDS label describing SR0039H.TAB.
   |   |   |   |- SR0039H.TAB File containing session 39 reduced housekeeping data.
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |- [SR14XXH]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |                  1400 through 1499.
   |   |
   |   |- [SCIDATA]       This directory contains calibrated science data.
   |   |   |
   |   |   |- [SR00XXS]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |   |   |          0000 through 0099.
   |   |   |   |
   |   |   |   |- SR0039S.LBL File containing PDS label describing SR0039S.TAB.
   |   |   |   |- SR0039S.TAB File containing session 39 reduced science data.
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |         .                      .
   |   |   |- [SR14XXS]   This directory contains data from MET sessions
   |   |                  1400 through 1499.
   |
File naming conventions for the various data files are described in the respective data set descriptions, contained in the CATALOG and DOCUMENT directories:

EDL raw and calibrated data EDLER_DS.CAT or EDLER_DS.HTM
EDL derived data EDLDDRDS.CAT or EDLDDRDS.HTM
Surface raw data SRFEDRDS.CAT or SRFEDRDS.HTM
Surface calibrated data SRFRDRDS.CAT or SRFRDRDS.HTM

7. Whom to Contact for Information

For questions concerning this volume set, contact:

PDS Planetary Atmospheres Node
Reta F. Beebe
New Mexico State University
Department of Astronomy
P.O. Box 30001/Dept. 4500
Las Cruces, NM 88003
(505) 646-1938

WWW Site: http://atmos.nmsu.edu/
E-mail: rbeebe@nmsu.edu

For general information related to the PDS, contact:
Planetary Data System, PDS Operator
M/S 202-101
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA 91109-8099
(818) 354-4321

WWW Site: http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/
E-mail: pds_operator@jpl.nasa.gov

8. Cognizant Persons & Acknowledgments

The ASI/MET package was built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tim Schofield was the Facility Instrument Science Team Lead.

This volume set was designed and produced at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California by Elizabeth Duxbury. The following people provided assistance in various capacities:

PDS Standards, Keywords, etc:

Betty Sword, Steve Hughes, Ron Joyner, and Jean Mortellaro (PDS-CN JPL), Lyle Huber and Jim Murphy (PDS-ATMOS, New Mexico State University), and Joe Mafi (PDS-PPI UCLA, Los Angeles, California).

Data Preparation and Documentation:

Doug Alexander, Sue LaVoie, Allan Runkle, and Pamela Woncik (Multimission Image Processing Laboratory, JPL), Donald Meyer and Tim Schofield (JPL), Jim Murphy (NASA Ames and New Mexico State University), Dr. Jim Schaeffer (NASA Ames/Sterling Software, Inc.), Elizabeth Conkling (NASA Ames/Foothill Junior College), Julio Magalhaes (NASA Ames), Rob Sullivan (Arizona State University and Cornell University), and Boris Semenov (PDS-NAIF, JPL).

MPF Project Support:

Kathleen Spellman, Susan Merrill, and Susan Roberts (JPL)

CD Reviewers:

Thanks to Lyle Huber and Jim Murphy (PDS-ATMOS, New Mexico State University), Julio Magalhães (NASA Ames), Tim Schofield (JPL), Rob Sullivan (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY), Betty Sword (PDS-CN, JPL), and John Wilson (Princeton University, NJ) for reviewing this CD.