Unified Abstract Mission Data

Description

Provided by the project office, this magnetic tape data set contains data from most of the Atmosphere Explorer-C investigations. Each binary magnetic tape, written on an XDS 930 computer, contains several calendar months of data. The first file of the tape is a header file specifying the satellite ID, point-by-point data record size, start and stop times of the data contained on the tape, a list of orbit numbers on the tape, and the magnetic and solar activity data for the time period. Subsequent data files, called "UA" files (Unified Abstract files), contain one orbit of UA data and orbit data, and are arranged in ascending order by orbit number. Each data file consists of a header record followed by approximately 145 records. The header record contains the orbit number, orbit start and stop times, UA header data, and orbit parameters corresponding to that orbit. The data records contain UA and orbit data at 15-s intervals for the time span specified in the header record. Since there may be gaps in the data, each record contains a corresponding time. Record words 58, 59, and 60 contain the results from this investigation and are, respectively, the electron temperature, the ion density, and the satellite potential. These words are stored as floating point numbers. Some of the other parameters included in the record are date and time of the measurement; time from perigee; sunlight/darkness flag; Greenwich sidereal time; height above the geoid; satellite position and velocity; geodetic latitude of the subsolar point; east longitude of the satellite; local apparent solar time; local magnetic time; McIlwain's L-shell parameter; invariant latitude; magnetic field strength; and geodetic latitude and longitude of both the ingress and egress points of the geomagnetic field line through the satellite.