The ground track files contain latitude, longitude, and shuttle altitude as
a function of seconds from launch (mission elapsed seconds, or MES) for the
periods of SLA operations. The ASCII text file and IDL save file are
incremented by 10 seconds and 1 second, repectively. The latitude and
longitude coordinates give the shuttle nadir ground track, which is not
equivalent to the coordinates of the laser ground track. Due to off nadir
pointing of the shuttle, the laser ground track can deviate from the nadir
ground track by as much as 6 km during nominal operations. Precise
geolocation of each laser footprint will be made available through this web
site at a later date.
Note: .bin extensions have been added to the files to force a file
download rather than browser display.
10 second interval ascii data
download sla10sec.bin 1.25 Mb
1 second interval IDL "save" file
for structure details use:
IDL> restore, 'sla1sec.bin'
IDL> help, /structure, t
download sla1sec.bin 14.2 Mb
Responsible NASA official: David Harding
Web Curator: Jim Roark (SSAI)
Email roark@denali.gsfc.nasa.gov with comments or suggestions
Last modified August 27, 1997