Assessment of the Usefulness and Availability of NASA's Earth and Space Science Mission Data (2002) / Chapter Skim
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2 Accessibility of Data: The Architecture of the Archives
2 Accessibility of Data: The Architecture of the Archives
Pages 24-46
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5A number of the active archives in existence today have their roots in the systems developed in the 1 970s or 1980s. For example, the Goddard Space Flight Center Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC)
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Geological Survey GSFC DAAC 1993 Goddard Space Flight Center, Upper atmosphere, atmospheric NASA dynamics, global biosphere, hydrologic processes LaRC DAAC 1989 Langley Research Center, Radiation budget, aerosols, NASA tropospheric chemistry NSIDC DAAC 1991 National Snow and Ice Data Center, Snow and ice, cryosphere University of Colorado ORNL DAAC 1993 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, biogeochemical fluxes and processes U.S. Department of Energy PO.DAAC 1991 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ocean circulation, air-sea interaction NASA-Caltech SEDAC 1994 CIESIN, Socioeconomic data and applications Columbia University Space Science ADC 1977 Goddard Space Flight Center, Astronomy, astrophysics, photometry, NASA spectroscopy HEASARC 1990 Laboratory for High-Energy High-energy astrophysics Astrophysics, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA IRSA 1999 Infrared Processing and Analysis Infrared science Center, CalTech MAST 1997 Multi-mission Archive, Optical/UV science Space Telescope Science Institute NED 1989 Infrared Processing and Analysis Extragalactic astronomy and Center, CalTech cosmology NSSDC 1966 Office of the Space Science Space physics data and long-term Directorate, Goddard Space Flight maintenance of all space science data Center, NASA PDS 1991 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Planetary and space science NASA-Caltech SDAC 199 1 Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Solar and heliospheric physics NOTE: ADC = Astronomical Data Center; ASP = Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility; CIESIN = Consortium for International Earth Science Information Networks; DAAC = Distributed Active Archive Center; EDC = EROS Data Center; EROS = Earth Resources Observations Systems; GSFC = Goddard Space Flight Center; HEASARC = High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center; IRSA = Infrared Science Archive; LaRC = Langley Research Center; MAST = Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope; NED = NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database; NSIDC = National Snow and Ice Data Center; NSSDC = National Space Science Data Center; ORAL = Oak Ridge National Laboratory; PDS = Planetary Data System; PO.DAAC = Physical Oceanography DAAC; SAR = synthetic aperture radar; SDAC = Solar Data Analysis Center; SEDAC = Socioeconomic Data and Application Center.
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Information about the active archives, data centers, and data services is summarized in Table 2.2. There is wide disparity in budgets, but it is not the size of the holdings that determines the costs of operating a data center.
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In some cases, the active archives are maintainer! by the mission-specific science center.
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NED, for example, makes it possible to locate data on individual galaxies; SIMBAD (Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data) performs a similar service for stellar data; and the ADS (Astrophysics Data System)
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Awards for both new observations and for use of older data are made through peer review. NASA's Astrophysics Senior Review panel, which met in June 2000, found that the astrophysics active archives and data services are generally serving the community well.9 However, the panel recommended that greater attention be paid to increasing interoperability of data sets and active archives.
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The astrophysics program has held six senior reviews since 199S, the Sun-Earth connection program held reviews in 1997 and 2001, and the first planetary science review was held in 2001.
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Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Another type of resource available to planetary scientists is the Regional Planetary Image Facility (RPTF)
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According to the archive manager, this approach is necessary for staying within a small budget (see Table 2.21. A senior review held in August 2001 found that the SDAC is an excellent example of a small discipline active archive that operates very cost-effectively and provides major services to the solar physics community.is 'NOAA centers, such as the National Geophysical Data Center and the World Data Center for Solar Terrestrial Physics, also manage U.S.-collected solar physics data.
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EARTH OBSERVING SYSTEM DATA AND INFORMATION SYSTEM Because many of the important research problems studied by earth scientists are multidisciplinary in nature, the active archives of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise were designed to be interoperable at the outset. The Earth Observing System (EOS)
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Data from most current Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) missions are being processed by science computing facilities (SCFs)
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TABLE 2.4 Processing Summary for EOSDIS Instruments Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Mission Instrument Processinga Processinga Processinga Current Missions ERBS ERBS LaRC LaRC LaRC SAGE Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF TOMS-EP TOMS Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF TOPEX/Poseidon NASA ALT Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF UARS All CDPF CDPF CDPF TRMM TIM TSDIS TSDIS TSDIS PR TSDIS TSDIS TSDIS VIRS TSDIS TSDIS TSDIS CERES LaTIS LaTIS LaTIS LIS LIS SCF LIS SCF LIS SCF SeaStar SeaWiFS Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Landsat 7 ETM+ LPGS LPGS N/A Terra MODIS EDOS GSFC DAAC/ECS MODAPS CERES EDOS LaTIS LaTIS MOPITT EDOS MOPITT SIPS MOPITT SIPS MISR EDOS LaRC DAAC/ECS LaRC DAAC/ECS ASTER EDOS ERSDAC Japan EDC DAAC/ECS ACRIMSat ACRIM Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF QuikSCAT Sea Winds Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Upcoming Missions Meteor SAGE III Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF ADEOS II SeaWinds Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Jason Poseidon-2/ Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF DORIS/JMR Aqua MODIS EDOS GSFC DAAC/ECS MODAPS AIRS, HSB, EDOS GSFCDAAC/ECS GSFC DAAC/ECS AMSU AMSR-E EDOS NASDA Instrument SCF CERES EDOS LaTIS LaTIS SORCE SOLSTICE Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Instrument SCF ICESat GLAS EDOS Instrument SCF Instrument SCF Level 0 = Reconstructed unprocessed instrument data with all communications artifacts removed; Level 1 = Level O data that have been calibrated, time referenced, and annotated with ancillaIy information; Level 2 = Higher-level data products, e.g., derived geophysical variables at the same resolution and location as the Level 1 data. Definitions modified from G
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; GLAS = Geoscience LASER Altimeter System; HSB = Humidity Sounder for Brazil; ICESat = Ice Clouds and land Elevation Satellite; JMR = Jason-1 Microwave Radiometer; Landsat= Land Satellite; LaTIS = Langley TRMM Information System ~ (LaRC DAAC Vet; LIS = Lightning Imaging Sensor; LPGS = Landsat Product Generation System; MISR = Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer; MODAPS = MODIS Adaptive Production System; MODIS = Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer; MOPITT = Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere; PR = Precipitation RADAR; QuikSCAT = Quick ScaKerometer; SAGE = Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment; SCF = Science Computing Facility; SeaWiFS = Sea-Viewing Wide-Field-of-View Sensor; SIM = Spectral Irradiance Monitor; SOLSTICE = Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment, SORCE = Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment; TIM = Total Irradiance Monitor; TOMS = Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer; TOPEX = Topography Experiment; TRMM = Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission; TSDIS = TRMM Satellite Data and Information System; UARS = Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite; V0 = Version 0 DAAC Developed System; V1 = Version lGSFC DAAC Developed System (for TRMM) ; VIRS = Visible Infrared Spectroradiometer; XPS = XUV Photometer System.
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The restructuring defers and/or eliminates some lower-level-data processing functionality; provides less user support; reduces production capacity by 25 percent; discards interim products after 6 months; reduces distribution capacity to users by one-third; reduces timeliness of data distribution, and permits DAACs and SCFs to take on some ECS functions. The increase in the estimated cost of the ECS contract is $98.8 million for 3 years, which includes the reduced requirements, inclusion of a new flight segment approach for Terra the addition of the control center requirement for Aqua; and the addition of science data management for Aqua, Aura, and TCESat.2' The total award fee to the ECS contractor was decreased 12 percent owing to poor performance in both cost and technical management.
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It is intended that SEEDS will be Barraged and implemented as an open and distributed information system architecture under a unifying framework of standards, core interfaces, arid levels of service. SEEDS faces a number of major challenges, including determining how to organize and manage a distributed system and achieving a balance between providing science teams with the 25Jacque Descloitres, Goddard Space Flight Center and PI of the Land Rapid Response Project, personal communication to D
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The standards and practices governing the acquisition, archiving, documentation, distribution, and analysis of earth science data vary by user group as well as by scientific discipline. SEEDS must recognize and embrace this tapestry of disciplines and subcommunities; there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the myriad data management needs of the community as a whole.
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Long-term maintenance requires much more than just making sure that the data are preserved and that the storage media are kept up to date.32 In order to ensure that archived data sets can continue to be used in the future, they must be properly documented, stored with data access and processing software, and migrated regularly to new media, operating systems, and so on. Only by continually reprocessing all data sets and data products can one ensure that the data will be viable 50 years from now.
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Both approaches entail a risk to the usefulness of data to fixture generations of scientists, as detailed below. Space Science Data and the National Space Science Data Center The mission of the NSSDC is "to provide data and information from space flight experiments for studies beyond those performed by the principal investigators."39 The NSSDC acts as the active archive for most space physics data and selected long-wavelength astrophysics data.
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44National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2001, Final Report of the Senior Review of the Sun-Earth Connection Mission Operations and Data Analysis Programs, 27 pp. 45Joe King, director of the National Space Science Data Center, personal communication, December 2001 and March 2002, and written response to a task group questionnaire in April 2001.
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This is not an issue for the Landsat holdings, which are already collocated with the Landsat data center. A similar solution, in which a NOAA data center is built at Goddard Space Flight Center, is being considered for atmosphere and oceans data.
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BOX2.2 Findings from the Report of a Workshop: Global Change Science Requirements for [ong-Term Archiving According to a 1998 workshop sponsored by NASA and NOAA, data centers should be supported by two guiding principles: 1. A data center must be established and operated in the simplest way possible to meet user needs and program goals, and 2.
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NASA should assume formal responsibility for maintaining its data sets and ensuring long-term access to them to permit new investigations that will continue to adc' to our scientific understanding. In some cases, it may be appropriate to transfer this responsibility to other federal agencies, but NASA must continue to maintain the data until adequate resources for preservation and access are available at the agency scheduled to receive the data from NASA.
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