What are data Drop Outs?
Data dropouts are caused by transmission problems during ground station contact. The effect can be anything from the loss of a few seconds to 100s of seconds in an eclipse. The data loss is taken into account in the tally of total exposure time for an observation. An attempt is made to re-plan the observation if more time is needed to meet the exposure goal. Another attempt to re-transmit the same data may be made, but there is no guarantee that that part of the solid state recorder would not have been over-written with new data by the time the next contingency pass comes around. Although the vast majority of eclipses are returned unaffected by data dropouts, if a proposer is relying on a continuous exposure (a) covering a particular time, or (b) needing to be of a particular length, or (c) needing to fully satisfy a particular sampling strategy, there is some small added risk that the science goals will not be achieved. The risk grows with the length of time or number of samples requi
