HINODE Operation Remarks

remarks

The most fruitful coordination opportunities for remote sensing in Cruise phase (which ends 2021-11-27 with the last Earth GAM) are probably:

2020-11-16T00:00:00 - 2020-11-23T00:00:00 (a recently added window)
2021-02-20T00:00:00 - 2021-02-25T00:00:00 (remote sensing checkout window #2)
2021-03-21T00:00:00 - 2021-03-24T00:00:00 (RSCW #3)
2021-09-22T00:00:00 - 2021-09-30T00:00:00 (RSCW #4)

If I restrict the discussion in this instance to our remote-sensing payload, the Cruise Phase will have 4 more major opportunities for observations, which are basically checkout windows, but as performance knowledge improves, so should the usability of the data (already very good for some instruments).

With the link you mention, you were close to perhaps the most useful information about these checkout windows and what we intend to do during them (so far). We’ve split our mission schedule up into 6-month periods for practical reasons (driven by station scheduling), so if you look at

https://issues.cosmos.esa.int/solarorbiterwiki/display/SOSP/LTP03+Jan+2021-June+2021

and

https://issues.cosmos.esa.int/solarorbiterwiki/display/SOSP/LTP04+July+2021-Dec+2021 ,

you’ll find tables that give the key characteristics of checkout windows 2, 3 and 4.

There are now 4 windows of remote sensing activity, because we’ve got better downlink performance than we’d initially expected, so we’re also going to let the remote-sensing payload do any delta, checkout or other observations they need in the period from week of 2020-11-16T00:00:00 to 2020-11-23T00:00:00 (the first one I mentioned above).

For RSCWs 2 and 3 in February & March of next year, Solar Orbiter will be on the far side of the Sun not quite opposite the Earth (to solar east from Earth), so we’d have interesting, different views of the corona. And Stereo-A would be somewhere in between :o)

For RSCW 4, the two missions’ views of the Sun have a much closer overlap and we’ll be doing quite a lot to get ready for full operations. I can imagine it’ll be especially valuable to do comparisons between EIS and SPICE, XRT and STIX, SOT and PHI, at that stage.

Once we get into the Nominal Mission, and after the Earth GAM restrictions expire (2021-12-04), then we’ll probably start doing daily observations with remote-sensing instruments in a sort of synoptic mode (called SPROUT SOOPs… blame the gang in Brussels for that one ;o) ). The first real Remote Sensing science Window start on 4th March 2022. But I guess this might be getting ahead of ourselves.”