Cluster Master Science Plan

Introduction

The Master Science Plan is an important and critical part of the process of planning Cluster science operations. It provides the strategic view of the acquisition of science data by the four Cluster spacecraft, e.g. in terms of scientific targets.

The links below provide access to a variety of information on the current and past plans

Information/Documentation

High level views of the Plan

Detailed views of the Plan

These are expanded views each showing the equivalent of two hours of local time in the precession of the Cluster orbits (local times are referenced to that at apogee). The expanded scale allows more detail to be shown, e.g. location of TDA8 periods (downlink to DSN).

Important: Since the autumn of 2012, Cluster science requirements have led us (occasionally) to schedule a significant number of BM1 and BM2 periods at different times on each spacecraft, e.g. because of large spacecraft separations in autumn 2012, and because of the need for careful targeting of BM2 on the auroral acceleration region in spring 2013. Due to the design of the JSOC software that handles the four-spacecraft Master Science Plan, these single spacecraft operatons cannot be represented in the Bryant plots shown on this web page or in the ASCII table of the Master Science Plan. See the JSOC wiki for details of these single spacecraft periods, and any no-data-taking periods.

Catalogue of all Bryant Plots

Eclipses: August/September 2016

During the 'Long Eclipse' season, JSOC has a P/L OFF periods on all four SC:

21/04/2016 19:10 - 21/04/2016 19:25 (C3) with WEC OFF - no data taking 18:10 - 02:25

Those instruments sensitive to manoeuvres must be put in safe modes around the manoeuvres, and the instruments sensitive to manoeuvres will remain in their safe modes until at least 8 hours after the manoeuvre burns.

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Last updated by  Mike Hapgood ( mike.hapgood@stfc.ac.uk), and Helen Walker ( helen.walker@stfc.ac.uk) 3 May 2016