Payload EID-A rates (only for reference)

At mission level planning and long term planning, we often refer to the so-called "EID-A rates" to pass on a high-level estimate on how much data will be available to the payload as a whole or a specific instrument. Also descriptions of SOOPs often use this term.

The so-called EID-A is the Solar Orbiter Experiment Interface Document - Part A, that defined all interfaces between PIs, prime contractor, S/C and instruments, etc. and it included also a preliminary allocation of data to each instrument, to guide the design of instrument modes.

Note that although they are typically still used at the start of the initial planning, there is always an optimisation round during which the project scientists typically allow deviations from the baseline as long as there are scientific arguments and the SWT can agree to the change.

For reference, the table below contains the data rates and volumes for each instrument as originally defined in the EID-A.

• The first column contains the EID-A rate in kbits per second, for science data only (excl HK).
• The second column contains the EID-A rate in volume per orbit. Note that this can be misleading for RS instruments!
  As the rates for RS instruments have been defined for a baseline of only 30 days (3 RS windows) of operations throughout the orbit, the RS  volumes per orbit are calculated based on the rate over 30 days. For IS payload they are based on the rate over 180 days (average orbit at time of design).
• The third column makes for easier comparison with the daily pro rata rates (MiBytes / Day) reported in SOOP Kitchen when hovering the mouse over an observation.