October 19, 1992 SSOC TOBAN REPORT, Week 42 H. Hudson, N. Tanaka 1. OP transmission problems occurred on Tuesday, Oct. 13. At SSOC there appeared to have been no problem, although the printer in the 3rd floor operations room reported difficulties with the line at about the same time. The problem is under investigation by NEC and they will report on its solution. 2. A problem with a "DSN flare mode gap" occurred during an interesting flare event that was associated with an eruptive prominence seen at Mauna Loa. This problem will be discussed below in the context of M vs H rate choices and the desirable number of DSN dumps. 3. A timing problem occurred with JJY/Loran on orbits 2 and 3 of Oct. 13 4. Fax machine problems were numerous on Oct. 13 at SSOC. This caused a lot of effort and wasted time. The machine was serviced and worked for the rest of the week. THE FAX MACHINE SHOULD BE REPLACED. 5. The RASM contact uses the B-toh outside teleophone line. This causes conflicts with normal usage of this line, which can be heavy. THERE SHOULD BE A DEDICATED OUTSIDE LINE FOR RASM USE. 6. The cancellations sent during Week 41 on the preliminary schedule for Week 43 (six passes) were only partly reflected in the final schedule, in that only three had actualy been deleted. - this appears to have been a simple error on Diem Tu's part, not significant as long as the SSOC tobans keep up-to-date with RASM files. - subsequent cancellations initiated by JPL made one of the un-cancelled passes valuable, so a second cancellation message only included two of the un-cancelled three 7. The STT timer was successfully set and its operation confirmed. The next timer setting is critical because Canopus will disappear during Week 43. This should be the priority item for Monday afternoon for the new SSOC tobans. 8. OP_FIRST_GUESS worked flawlessly all week. 9. RASM contact was generally successful, although two "bad line" connections happened. This probably will always be a danger with modem access, and cannot be fixed by software. The kermit installation on flare11 is still not doing auto-dialing, so that RASM access requires much manual intervention. The instructions are complete and accurate, though. 10. The SSOC and KSC tobans had considerable trouble with the day/night epoch we are currently in, from the point of view of understanding the real-time command patterns. IF COMMAND GENERATION CONTINUES TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE, THERE SHOULD BE AN "EXPERT SYSTEM" PROGRAM SUCH AS OP_FIRST_GUESS TO HELP GENERATE THE REAL-TIME COMMANDS. Otherwise new people will keep on making old mistakes. ^L October 17, 1992 BRIEF REPORT ON TRIP TO JPL J. Lemen This is a short report of my one-day trip to JPL where I met with Joe Espinueva, Diem Tu, and others. I won't fill in all the details since I have just written a 4 page summary which Joe Espinueva is supposed to review before distribution. These are just some "bullets" that came out of the meeting. 1. We can always trust RASM with regard to the final schedule. The final schedule (or 7-Day Schedule in RASM terminology) is maintained by the Real-Time Ops. If they need to delete a pass for some reason they are supposed to notify us by Fax and they will also update the RASM file. 2. Joe Espinueva showed an interesting plot of the residuals (delta-time in sec of Yohkoh at the DSN sites compared to predictions). Prior to 28 August they were frequently as large as 60 sec, but suddenly on 28 Aug they reduced significantly. In September that have only been two days when the residuals have exceeded 5 sec. I suspect this will be discussed at the upcoming meeting between JPL and ISAS at the end of the month. 3. Hugh, can we tell Diem Tu that he no longer has to Fax his preliminary and final schedules to us? I ask this of you since you are the current SSOC. Diem Tu doesn't want to send those Faxes if he can avoid it. I don't think they are necessary any more. Please get some consensus at next Monday's WOM and then send a Fax to Diem Tu with CC to Joe Espinueva. 4. A side issue that came up was what ISAS might expect in the future from the DSN. Joe Espinueva told me that JPL expects to support Yohkoh for four years total. If there is a plan for ISAS to operate the spacecraft for more than four years and if there is a desire to have DSN support during that time frame, then ISAS should make some formal request soon. 5. Politics of 10 passes/day. It became more obvious to me that JPL feels a strong commitment to provide 10 contacts per day to Yohkoh. This must be in some high-level agreement. Some of the operational decisions were be influenced by this, because the scheduling group at JPL is often being criticized for not meeting this objective. I explained that we may not always want 10 passes a day, and that if this is a problem, then the agreement ought to be re-worded to allow up to 10 passes, but not necessarily require 10 passes per day. 6. Diem Tu no longer adds additional passes after receiving our preliminary (+3 to +7 week) request. He discontinued this, in fact, two months ago. 7. It turns out that Diem Tu is the scheduler for all projects which utilize the 26 meter antennas. 8. Forms. Since this has been a bit confusing, I asked Joe Espinueva to try to clarify which forms we should use. The following is extracted from my minutes: There are three forms that we normally use: Short Form -- The one that Steve Wolf included in his document Long Form Real-Time -- 80 column. entitled: Real-Time Schedule Change Request Long Form Non Real-Time -- 80 column, entitled: Non Real-Time Schedule Change Request Form What Recipient(s) ----- --------------------------- ------------------------- Short Delete preliminary contacts Diem Tu; cc: J. Espinueva Short Delete "final" contacts Real-Time Ops Long Non R-T Add preliminary contacts Diem Tu; cc: J. Espinueva Long R-T Add contact to "final" sched Real-Time ops As one can see from the above list, under most conditions, the Yohkoh scientists can use the Short form. If they are adding a contact, then they should make sure to use the appropriate long form. 9. I am trying to establish E-mail communications with Diem Tu and Joe Espinueva. If we can make this work reliably, we might want to set up an SSOC account on isass0 for E-mail communications. I hope I can get out the full minutes by next week. Regards, Jim ^L FAXES EXCHANGED WITH JPL REGARDING THE FORTHCOMING MAINFRAME DOWN PERIODS To: Diem Tu: From: H. Hudson, T. Kosugi, Y. Ogawara Regarding: Special situation at ISAS We have a difficult situation arising at the end of this month and in November. The ISAS mainframe computers will be down for equipment replacement. During this time (intervals listed below) we will not be able to use our normal software to edit the Yohkoh on-board command lists. Another concern is the availability of up-to-date orbital elements, since these presently require the use of these computers. We therefore may wish to write our commands further ahead of time than we normally do, but we're concerned about DSN pass cancellations. Is there some way that we can have the selected Yohkoh passes "protected" more strongly over these intervals? If this were done, then we could schedule the dumps with more confidence that important data would not be lost. The intervals in question are: October 29 - November 3 (Thursday - Tuesday, inclusive) November 18 - November 21 (Wednesday - Saturday, inclusive) Are there special circumstances for DSN that would make these intervals especially difficult, such as a Shuttle flight? Thanks for your advice and help on this question. This note is basically for information purposes. We will have a better idea about the scope of our problems at ISAS early next week. To: Hudson/Kosugi/Ogawara From: Steve Woldherr/Joe Espinueva Subject: Response to fax message dated 10/13 regarding special situation I understand the difficulties you are facing during the dates you indicated. The only problem that would possibly hinder us from "protecting" your passes after we have published the 7-day schedule is Shuttle and spacecraft emergencies. As of today, the Shuttle launch is scheduled on Oct. 22 and lands on Nov. 1. Additionally, the next Shuttle launch is slated Nov. 16 and lands on Nov. 23. The inclusiive dates you indicated (10/29 - 11/3 and 11/18 - 11/21) are perfectly aligned during the Shuttle dates. However, we will do our best to keep your passes "protected" if possible, but we cannot guarantee full protection. As long as the Shuttle will not run into any problems and emergency situations (hopefully), there should be no changes to the 7-day schedule. We will try our best... regards/je Reply from Diem Tu: 1. I received your request concerning of protecting activities occurred on 10/29-11/03. I am working towraard in clearing any remaining conflicts. I should have a firmed schedule back to you on Monday. 2. For the preliminary schedule, I run into some software problems here, and try to resolve bugs in the program. It is not possible to get the preliminary week out to you by Friday. 3. James Lemen was here and the discussion went really well. I hope the next fewmonths we will begin interface through E mail. ^L FLARE OBSERVATIONS, WEEK 42 The flare mode observations are partially listed, with commentary, below. There is an issue concerning these items that needs some discussion. We have had an interesting event interrupted by a DSN dump, namely the one on 14-oct-92, in which the dump just coincided with the rise phase of an over-the-limb flare with interesting coronal manifestations. Such interruptions are the price we pay for having many DSN data dumps. We can avoid them by reducing the number of DSN passes and using M telemetry more extensively. A related issue is the use of the "invisible orbits" for movie continuity. Right now OP_FIRST_GUESS has a criterion of 130 minutes of sunshine before it switches to LOS-M commands. That implies long gaps with intervals of half resolution SXT images, rather than few gaps but with quarter resolution images. I suggest that continuity is more important than angular resolution, or at least it is an alternative. The suggestion is to reduce interval to a much smaller value, say to one orbital period (to match the quality of data coming from the KSC passes). Week 42 flare observations (beginning Oct. 10) October 10 12:33 flare flag: Yohkoh coming out of SAA 10-OCT-92 12:24 12:35 12:44 C8.6 October 11 02:02 flare flag: good observations 11-OCT-92 02:00 02:09 02:29 C8.3 SN S12W60 7303 86 91 46 II,V 13:15 flare flag: looks like an artifact from trapped radiation (not SAA) no GOES event October 12 21:48 flare flag: good observations 12-OCT-92 21:48 21:53 22:01 C2.5 SF S19W88 7303 October 13 15:57 flare flag: over the limb in AR at SW 13-OCT-92 16:00 16:14 16:30 C5.0 86 II,IV October 14 19:27 flare flag: over the limb in AR at SW 14-OCT-92 19:17 19:35 19:51 C9.9 B There were observations of an EPL at Mauna Loa with this event, which had interesting properties in the SXT images. October 15 15:24 flare flag: false trigger