Data Set Overview  :   This data set contains Calibrated data taken by New Horizons  Student Dust Counter  instrument during the PLUTOCRUISE mission phase.  The mission of the SDC is to analyze the size and distribution of Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) along the New Horizon trajectory to the Kuiper Belt. SDC comprises twelve thin, permanently polarized polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) plastic film sensors, with a combined area of about 0.1 m**2, mounted on the top surface of a support panel and normal to the spacecraft ramdirection (flight velocity). In addition, there are two reference sensors, identical to the top surface sensors, mounted on the back side of the detectorsupport panel and protected from any dust impacts, used to monitor background noise levels.  An impacting IDP causes a depolarization charge when it penetrates the PVDF film on one of the sensors. That charge is then measured by that sensor's electronics (channel); if the measurement is above a preset level, the instrument records and stores the event for later downlink. The level preset is adjusted based on in-flight Noise Floor Calibrations, and there are extensive autonomy rules adjusting SDC behavior, even turning channels off forup to thirty days at a time, to avoid overloading the storage system with noise.  Some time between instrument delivery to the spacecraft and launch, the detector on one channel began exhibiting symptoms of degraded electrical contacts to the PVDF; data from that channel (11) are still processed but should be ignored.  SDC was designed to detect events for particles down to about one picogram at Pluto; that detection limit is lower earlier in the mission where the spacecraft velocity was higher. The SDC instrument has a temperature- and velocity-dependent calibration, first converting the raw measurement to charge, then converting charge to particle mass.  The common data product is a binary table of downlinked event data: time; sensor channel; magnitude; threshold magnitude. Associated data products are housekeeping data such as instrument temperatures for calibration and near-in-time spacecraft thruster events, which may induce false positives i.e.SDC events not caused by IDPs.  Following the Jupiter encounter, SDC collected science data intermittently during hibernation in the following years of the mission, designated as the PLUTOCRUISE phase. There were also Annual Checkouts (ACOs), STIM calibrations, Noise calibrations, and an anomaly in November, 2007.   Every observation provided in this data set was taken as a part of a  particular sequence. A list of these sequences has been provided in  file DOCUMENT/SEQ_SDC_PLUTOCRUISE.TAB.  N.B. Some sequences provided may have no corresponding observations.   For a list of observations, refer to the data set index table; this  is typically INDEX.TAB initially in the INDEX/ area of the data set;  there is also a file SLIMINDX.TAB in INDEX/ that summarizes key  information relevant to each observation, including which sequence  was in effect and what target was likely intended for the  observation.    Version  :   This is VERSION 1.0 of this data set.    Processing  :   The data in this data set were created by a software data  processing pipeline on the Science Operation Center (SOC) at  the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Department of Space Studies.  This SOC pipeline assembled data as FITS files from raw telemetry  packets sent down by the spacecraft and populated the data labels  with housekeeping and engineering values, and computed geometry  parameters using SPICE kernels. The pipeline did not resample  the data.   SDC data calibration is a two-step process: raw data numbers from a  particle impact are converted to a charge, and the charge is  converted to a particle mass via the ground calibrations obtained at  a dust acceleration facility. Refer to the provided documentation  for more information. The latest calibration procedure is described  in James et al., (2010) [JAMESETAL2010].    Data  :   The observations in this data set are stored in data files using  standard Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format. Each FITS  file has a corresponding detached PDS label file, named according  to a common convention. The FITS files may have image and/or table  extensions; see the PDS label plus the DOCUMENT files for a  description of these extensions and their contents.   This Data section comprises the following sub-topics:   - Filename/Product IDs  - Instrument description  - Other sources of information useful in interpreting these Data  - Visit Description, Visit Number, and Target in the Data Labels    Filename/Product IDs  --------------------   The filenames and product IDs of observations adhere to a  common convention e.g.   ALI_0123456789_0X0AB_ENG_1.FIT  ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^\__/  | | | | | ^^  | | | | | |  | | | | | +--File type (includes dot)  | | | | | - .FIT for FITS file  | | | | | - .LBL for PDS label  | | | | | - not part of product ID  | | | | |  | | | | +-- Version number from the SOC  | | | | (Science Operations Center)  | | | |  | | | +--ENG for CODMAC Level 2 data *  | | | SCI for CODMAC Level 3 data *  | | |  | | +--Application ID (ApID) of the telemetry data  | | packet from which the data come  | |  | +--MET (Mission Event Time) i.e. Spacecraft Clock  |  +--Instrument designator   * For those datasets where the NH project is delivering  CODMAC Level 1 & 2 data (REX & PEPSSI), ENG and SCI apply  to CODMAC Level 1 & 2 data, respectively.    Instrument Instrument designators ApIDs  : : :  SDC SDC 0X700   * Not all values in this range are in this data set   There are other ApIDs that contain housekeeping values and  other values. See the documentation for more details.    Here is a summary of the types of files generated by each ApID  along with the instrument designator that go with each ApID:    ApIDs Data product description/Prefix(es)  : :  0x700 - SDC Science Data/SDC    Instrument description  ----------------------   Refer to the following files for a description of this instrument.   CATALOG   SDC.CAT   DOCUMENTS   SDC_SSR.*  SOC_INST_ICD.*  NH_SDC_V###_TI.TXT (### is a version number)    Other sources of information useful in interpreting these Data  --------------------------------------------------------------   Refer to the following files for more information about these data   NH Trajectory tables:   /DOCUMENT/NH_MISSION_TRAJECTORY.* - Heliocentric   SDC Field Of View definitions:   /DOCUMENT/NH_FOV.*  /DOCUMENT/NH_SDC_V###_TI.TXT     Visit Description, Visit Number, and Target in the Data Labels  ---------------------------------------------------------------   The observation sequences were defined in Science Activity  Planning (SAP) documents, and grouped by Visit Description and  Visit Number. The SAPs are spreadsheets with one Visit Description  & Number per row. A nominal target is also included on each row  and included in the data labels, but does not always match with the  TARGET_NAME field's value in the data labels. In some cases, the  target was designated as RA,DEC pointing values in the form  ``RADEC:123.45,-12.34'' indicating Right Ascension and Declination,  in degrees, of the target from the spacecraft in the Earth  Equatorial J2000 inertial reference frame. This indicates either  that the target was either a star, or that the target's ephemeris  was not loaded into the spacecraft's attitude and control system  which in turn meant the spacecraft could not be pointed at the  target by a body identifier and an inertial pointing value had to  be specified as Right Ascension and Declination values. The PDS  standards do not allow putting a value like RADEC:... in the PDS  TARGET_NAME keyword's value; in those cases the PDS TARGET_NAME  value is set to CALIBRATION.    Ancillary Data  :   The geometry items included in the data labels were computed  using the SPICE kernels archived in the New Horizons SPICE  data set, NH-X-SPICE-6-PLUTOCRUISE-V1.0.   Every observation provided in this data set was taken as a part of a  particular sequence. A list of these sequences has been provided in  file DOCUMENT/SEQ_SDC_PLUTOCRUISE.TAB. In addition, the  sequence identifier (ID) and description are included in the PDS label  for every observation. N.B. While every observation has an associated  sequence, every sequence may not have associated observations; that is,  some sequences may have failed to execute due to spacecraft events  (e.g. safing) and there will be observations associated with those  sequences. No attempt has been made during the preparation of this  data set to identify if any, or how many, such empty sequences there  are, so it is up to the user to compare the times of the sequences  to the times of the available observations from the INDEX/INDEX.TAB  table to identify such sequences.    Time  :   There are several time systems, or units, in use in this dataset:  New Horizons spacecraft MET (Mission Event Time or Mission Elapsed  Time), UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), and TDB Barycentric  Dynamical Time.   This section will give a summary description of the relationship  between these time systems. For a complete explanation of these  time systems the reader is referred to the documentation  distributed with the Navigation and Ancillary Information  Facility (NAIF) SPICE toolkit from the PDS NAIF node, (see  http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/).   The most common time unit associated with the data is the spacecraft  MET. MET is a 32-bit counter on the New Horizons spacecraft that  runs at a rate of about one increment per second starting from a  value of zero at   19.January, 2006 18:08:02 UTC   or   JD2453755.256337 TDB.   The leapsecond adjustment (DELTA_ET : ET - UTC) over this dataset  is 65.184s.   The data labels for any given product in this dataset usually  contain at least one pair of common UTC and MET representations  of the time at the middle of the observation. Other portions  of the products, for example tables of data taken over periods  of up to a day or more, will only have the MET time associated  with a given row of the table.   For the data user's use in interpreting these times, a reasonable  approximation (+/- 1s) of the conversion between Julian Day (TDB)  and MET is as follows:   JD TDB : 2453755.256337 + ( MET / 86399.9998693 )   For more accurate calculations the reader is referred to the  NAIF/SPICE documentation as mentioned above.    Reference Frame  :    Geometric Parameter Reference Frame  -----------------------------------  Earth Mean Equator and Vernal Equinox of J2000 (EMEJ2000) is the  inertial reference frame used to specify observational geometry  items provided in the data labels. Geometric parameters are based  on best available SPICE data at time of data creation.    Epoch of Geometric Parameters  -----------------------------  All geometric parameters provided in the data labels were  computed at the epoch midway between the START_TIME and  STOP_TIME label fields.     Software  :   The observations in this data set are in standard FITS format  with PDS labels, and can be viewed by a number of PDS-provided  and commercial programs. For this reason no special software is  provided with this data set.    Contact Information  :   For any questions regarding the data format of the archive,  contact   New Horizons SDC Principal Investigator:   Mihaly Horany, LASP, University of Colorado   Mihaly Horanyi   Laboratory for Atmospheric  and Space Physics  University of Colorado  Boulder, CO 80302-0392  USA

Confidence Level Overview  :  During the processing of the data in preparation for  delivery with this volume, the packet data associated with each  observation were used only if they passed a rigorous verification  process including standard checksums.   In addition, raw (Level 2) observation data for which adequate  contemporary housekeeping and other ancillary data are not available  may not be reduced to calibrated (Level 3) data. This issue is raised  here to explain why some data products in the raw data set,   NH-X-SDC-2-PLUTOCRUISE-V1.0,   may not have corresponding data products in the calibrated data set,   NH-X-SDC-3-PLUTOCRUISE-V1.0.    Data coverage and quality  :   Every observation provided in this data set was taken as a part of a  particular sequence. A list of these sequences has been provided in  file DOCUMENT/SEQ_SDC_PLUTOCRUISE.TAB. N.B. Some sequences  provided may have zero corresponding observations.   Refer to the Confidence Level Overview section above for a summary  of steps taken to assure data quality.    Caveat about TARGET_NAME in PDS labels and observational intent  :    A fundamental truth of managing data from some spacecraft missions  is that the intent of any observation is not suitable for insertion  into the command stream sent to the spacecraft to execute that  observation. As a result, re-attaching that intent to the data  that are later downlinked is problematic at best; for New Horizons  that task is made even more difficult as the only meta-data that  come down with the observation is the unpredictable time of the  observation. The task is made yet even more difficult because  uplink personnel, who generate the command sequences and initially  know the intent of each observation, are perpetually under  deadlines imposed by orbital mechanics and can rarely be spared for  the time-intensive task of resolving this issue.   To make a long story short, the downlink team on New Horizons has  created an automated system to take various uplink products, decode  things like Chebyshev polynomials in command sequences representing  celestial body ephemerides for use on the spacecraft to control  pointing, and infer from those data what the most likely intended  target was at any time during the mission. This works well during  flyby encounters and less so during cruise phases and hibernation.   The point to be made is that the user of these PDS data needs to  be cautious when using the TARGET_NAME and other target-related  parameters stored in this data set. This is less an issue for the  plasma and particle instruments, more so for pointing instruments.  To this end, the heliocentric ephemeris of the spacecraft, the  spacecraft-relative ephemeris of the inferred target, and the  inertial attitude of the instrument reference frame are provided  with all data, in the J2000 inertial reference frame, so the user  can check where that target is in the Field Of View (FOV) of the  instrument. Furthermore, for pointing instruments with one or more  spatial components to their detectors, a table has been provided  in the DOCUMENT/ area with XY (two-dimensional) positions of each  inferred target in the primary data products; if those values are  several thousand pixels off of a detector array, it is a strong  indication that the actual target of that observation is something  other than the inferred target, or no target at all e.g. dark sky.    Review  :  This dataset was peer reviewed and certified for scientific use on  TBD.