MESSENGER MLA Raw Data

Mercury Laser Altimere (MLA) Raw product types

Instrument: MESSENGER Mercury Laser Altimeter

PDS4 Bundle: urn:nasa:pds:mess_mla_rawDOI: 10.17189/1518579

MESSENGER PDS3 to PDS4 Migration Status: Complete

For more information about MLA Raw products, see the Product SIS.

Note: The product SIS was created for PDS3, but it is still applicable to the data after the PDS4 migration.

The MESSENGER MLA raw product collection consists of uncalibrated observations from the MLA instrument. There are three product types in this collection, including raw science products, instrument status, and hardware diagnostic information. A single raw product file typically contains data collected over one Earth day. A description of each product type is given in the table below. Code refers to the product type abbreviation used in the file name.

Code	Product Type	Description	Storage Format
STA	Engineering	This product type contains MLA instrument engineering data. Parameters are included such as voltages, temperatures, and timing stored in the original telemetry counts.	Binary Table
HAD	Hardware Diagnostic	The Hardware Diagnostic product type contains diagnostic information about the instrument and background brightness information from the  detector. All values are the original telemetry  counts.	Binary Table
SCI	Science	The Science product type contains the ranging information as collected by the MLA instrument in its Science mode. Values have not been calibrated or converted into engineering units.	Binary Table

MLA Raw products have the following file names:

mlazzzyymmddhhnn.dat

where:

zzz = Product Type (Code)

yy = last 2 digits of the year in which the first data record was acquired

mm = 2-digit month in which the first data record was acquired

dd = 2-digit day in which the first data record was acquired

hh = 2-digit hour corresponding to the first record in the data