Did Malin Space Science Systems Censor Data?
The MOC is designed to photograph a mapping swath during the day lit portion of every orbit. Many orbits are missing from the data set. Other swaths are present in part, and the missing portion of the swath is blacked out. I call those blacked-out portions “censored” for lack of a better term. I’m sure that there are technical reasons why the “censored” data was blacked out, and my guess as to what may have caused these technical reasons are given later in this section. I find it curious that there are 56 consecutive mapping swaths missing or censored from June 5 to June 9, 2000. (These swaths would be in the missing sequence of 121 consecutive images of any kind.) The last good wide-angle mapping swath before this image gap was for orbit number 5561 (Image number m1600297) on June 5, 2000 from 08:59:49 to 09:57:46, and the next good wide-angle mapping swath after this gap was for orbit number 5617 (Image number m1600465) on June 9, 2000 from 22:48:14 to 23:46:11. Orbit 5593 (= 5554 +
