MEMO

To:      SOHO EOF and FOT
From:    Piet Martens, ESA SOC
Date:    11 March 1996
Subject: SOHO Planning Tools


The purpose of this memo is to clarify the working of the
planning system used to produce the SOHO operations schedule.

The flow-diagram below summarizes the present situation.


  ______________   ACP  ______________  EAP/KAP  _______________
 | FOT Planning | -->--| ECS Planning | --->--- | Experiment    |
 | Tool         |  SAP | Tool         |  IAP    | Planning Tools|
 |______________| --<--|______________| ---<--- |_______________|
                            |  |
                        CAP ^  V EAP/KAP
                            |  |
                        ______________                    
                       | IDL Planning |
                       | Tool         |
                       |______________|

The boxes represent the four types of planning tools in use:

 1. FOT Planning Tool: produces schedule with DSN contacts, SVM 
    reserved, Payload reserved (TSTOL and delayed commands), 
    SSR dump times, and MDI high rates.

 2. Experiment Planning Tools (MDI, SUMER, CDS, EIT, UVCS,
    LASCO): produce experiment science programs.

 3. IDL Planning Tool: for displaying and updating the 
    integrated science plan, and adding JOPs and campaigns 
    (in use during meetings).

 4. ECS Planning Tool: collects, integrates, and redistributes
    the input from all other tools, and flags schedule conflicts.

The lines with arrows represent the exchange of information between
the tools, by means of formatted text-files. The three letter filename
extension, indicated near the line, refers to a unique format. 

File exchange occurs by FTP to/from the following ECS directories: 

     ecs/ftp/actplan/*.ACP and *.SAP
     ecs/ftp/iws_files/input_actplan/*.IAP and *.CAP
     ecs/ftp/iws_files/output_actplan/*.KAP and *.EAP

The file-formats and naming conventions between ECS and experiment
tools are defined in the "Interface Control Document between the ECS 
and the Experimenters", available from the SOHO Web pages
(/publications/soho-documents). The .CAP format is identical to
the .KAP format, and the .ACP and .SAP are described in the CMS/EOF
ICD (available at ECS office).

END-OF-MEMO